Auth Variables

Hi, I have a question regarding Auth. I have seen the following behaviour within the loginFunction: $username is empty, if this username is not found in the database $username="username" if username is found in the database. Accordingly username shows up in the login-form-field or not. I would like to handle this differently: I want to include a loginform.php that behaves the same way. - username field empty if $username is not found in database - username in field if found in database But this doesn't work for me. Every username I type in always shows up. I have no idea how I could 'grab' the value of $username within the loginFunction and pass it on to loginform.php I really searched the archive, read docs and the code and tried the most obscure things - but I didn't arrive anywhere. any idea? Florian