Bizarre statement

Debugging my message board took me to this stage...

if ($last_poster != $username) {$font = "C0080F";}

If the last guy who posted is different to the guy logged in make the topic red (normally takes time into account as well)

This then goes out in a while statement, and makes all the posts red.

Before you say the while is wrong, THIS code...

if ($last_poster == $username) {$font = "C0080F";}

makes ONLY the ONE post where last_poster and username are the same red!

So why does == work, and != not work! It works for showing new topics in forums, just not showing new posts in topics!

Thanks for any help, this is driving me mad

you probably need to post some parts of your code so we can see what surrounds your if statement.

Not a lot

I added in the below before the if statement

echo "USERNAME: $username ";
echo "LAST POSTER: $last_poster";

and so I know its not working right

the links where the color code is used is below

echo "<LI><a href='http://www.mysite.com/comlinks/posts.php?forum=$forum&topic=$topic'><b><font color='$font'>$title</font></b> ($replies $r_word)</a>   ";