Functions are driving me crazy....

Hi everyone :) So partly to get an answer, and partly to boost my post rankings for the week I have a question. I am attempting to write an authentication function which would query a database, check the username/password and return true if it matches. If it doesn't match, then it shouldn't return anything and they are denied access. Here is the code for the function: <?PHP function authentication(){ if($user && $pass) { // Keep in mind, PASSWORD has meaning in MySQL // Do your string sanitizing here // (e.g. - $user = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['user']);) $loginQuery = "SELECT * FROM login WHERE user='".$user."' AND Userpass='".$pass."' LIMIT 0,1;"; $loginResult = mysql_query($loginQuery) or die("Wrong data supplied or database error" .mysql_error()); while($row1 = mysql_fetch_array($loginResult)) { $_SESSION['user'] = $row1['User']; $_SESSION['loggedin'] = "YES"; $authenticated = "true"; } } }return $authenticated; ?> and here is the code that I am using to call it: $authenticated = authentication($user, $pass); but when ever I try and run it I get the following errors in my log file, and the page doesn't load the info in the database. Help me please! My error log shows this: [Fri Jan 25 14:55:14 2008] [error] PHP Notice: Undefined variable: authenticated in /Volumes/RAIDer/webserver/includes/oldbinc/function/authentication.func.php on line 16 [Fri Jan 25 14:55:14 2008] [error] PHP Notice: Undefined variable: user in /Volumes/RAIDer/webserver/includes/oldbinc/function/authentication.func.php on line 5 [Fri Jan 25 14:55:14 2008] [error] PHP Notice: Undefined variable: user in /Volumes/RAIDer/webserver/includes/oldbinc/function/authentication.func.php on line 5 -- Jason Pruim Raoset Inc. Technology Manager MQC Specialist 3251 132nd ave Holland, MI, 49424 www.raoset.com japruim@raoset.com