Re: I really don't understand this?

Well, in my opinion this piece of script doesn't work because in the 2nd and 3rd elseif the variable $duplicate is not set or if set is empty... You could try to put the assignment $duplicate = duplicate_name($form["name"]) before performing the three if statements, use the same condition used in the first one also in the two following ones or compare directly the value returned by the function like: if (duplicate_name($form["name"]) =="T"){...} Otherwise why not use a switch statement, instead? It should sound like this: if (empty($form["name"])) { $error["name"] = "*"; $message["name"] = "Required field!"; } else{ $duplicate = duplicate_name($form["name"]) switch ($duplicate) { case "T": ... case "D": ... case "S": ... } } I hope my help could be useful to you Francesco PS Mail me directly if it works as I suggested ;)