newbie, help please

How do i find out whether a variable ($name) has anything in it. I want to see whether the visitor has filled in a form or not:

Could you use something like?

if ($name=="")
{
blah, blah, blah...
}

Thanks

if ($name == "") {
echo "you did not specify name";
} else {
echo "you did specify name";
}

      OR DO THIS

if (!$name) {
echo "you did not specify name";
}
if ($name) {
echo "you did specfy name";
}

Enjoy!!

Jason Rottman

That would certainly work.

You could also use the isset() function.
It returns TRUE if a var exists and FALSE if not.

ir (isset($test)) {
// do some stuff
}

Nick

thanks

A combination of isset and != is usually in order.

if you do
$a=0; # zero
if ($a)
{
echo "a is filled";
}
else
{
echo "a is not filled";
};

you will get : a is not filled.
Even though it clearly is filled.

use something like this:

if (isset($a) && ($a!=""))
{
echo "a is set and not empty";
};

A nice side-effect of checking it this way is that it doesn't generate a warning if you switch on PHP error reporting (as you really should)