A newbie search site question

Hello, I just learn PHP for a month now. It's hard for me since I have no background in programming (I do HTML but this is totally different). Last few days I try to make a simple script so visitors can search my site. I use a MySQL database here and there are some tables to handle my other PHP works. The "search" table contains: words_id, words, path_id, file_id, and info fields. This is my snippet: <?php//search.php // Connect to database include "db.php"; // Looking for the right word $query = mysql_query ("SELECT search.words_id, search.words, search.path_id, search.file_id, search.info, tips.tips, path.path_id, path.path, filename.file_id FROM search, tips, path, filename WHERE words LIKE '%$search%', search.path_id = path.path_id AND search.file_id = filename.file_id ORDER BY words_id"); if (empty($query)){ echo "<P>Sorry, no matching ...</P>"; } else {// Display search while ($hasil = mysql_fetch_array($query)){ echo "<P><A href=\"$hasil[path]/tip.php?file_id=$hasil[file_id]&tips=$hasil[tips]\">$hasil[tips]</A>"; echo "$hasil[info]</P>\n"; } } ?> And here's my search form: <FORM method="GET" action="search.php"> <INPUT type="text" name="search" size="15"> <INPUT type="submit"> </FORM> But I always get the "Sorry, no matching ..." output even though my SQL table has the word in its field. Would someone help me with this. Any suggestion, hints or tips will help me so much. Thank you in advance, ===== Best regards, Dewara Sianipar My Personal Pages. "Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up." -Anon.