RE: [PHP] Variable Prob

Thanks for the debugging tip... Seems that the 'else' statement wasn't being called at all, so for some reason $last_name was evaluating to true even though there's a NULL entry for that record/field. I used a different query, where a person with a NULL last_name showed up first, and the 'else' statement still wasn't being called but there was no $last_name showing. Anyway, I added "ORDER BY last_name" to my mysql_query() statement and for some reason the 'else' statements started working. Any ideas on why that would be? I'm glad it works now, but I'm a little confused as to why it works. Thanks again. -----Original Message----- From: Miguel Cruz [mailto:mnc@stoic.net] Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2002 11:06 PM To: Jason Soza Cc: php-general@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP] Variable Prob It would seem the only way this could happen is if $last_name evaluates to true. Two suggestions: 1) Make some extra change in one of the printf statements so you can see which one is really being called. 2) If that doesn't illuminate anything, show a little more code. miguel On Sat, 11 May 2002, Jason Soza wrote: > Argh! > > I hate it when one little annoying thing starts up right when I think I have > the coding finished! I have the following code: > > if($last_name) { > printf("%s > > %s's<br><b>%s</b><br>%s\n</td>",$first_name,$last_name,$year,$color); > } else { > > printf("%s's<br><b>%s</b><br>%s\n</td>",$first_name,$year,$color); > } > > So if the person has a last name in the database, print "John Doe's 1990 > Red" and if they don't, print "John's 1990 Red". > > This is in a while() statement, and it works except that on one particular > query, the last record that comes up has a NULL value for the last name, but > rather than printing $first_name's it prints $first_name $last_name using > the last name of the previous record! > > Am I missing something there? Do I need to clear out a variable somewhere? > It seems like since $last_name isn't even called in the else statement, it > shouldn't even be showing up! > > Jason Soza