PHP not reading url variables

[emerald558]

Hi all,
Another newbie question, I have a copy of a web site and am trying to replicate it on another RedHat box. Most everything is working except that PHP refuses to read url variables in sent with the get method. I know the code isn't the problem as it works fine on the production box. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to have support for curl or something? Do I need to reinstall php like I had to do for MySql support? I have edited the php.ini file (or is it php.ini-dist on linux?) to turn global variables on, but nothing seems to work. Here is a sample of code:
if ($DepartmentID !=-1) {$Department_str = "(Courses.DeptID=\"$DepartmentID\") AND"; }
else { $Department_str = ""; }

DepartmentID is the name of the url variable. Can anyone shed some light on this for me? Thanks in advance.

[jerdo]

Try using $_GET[var_name]

[bernouli]

$DepartmentID = $HTTP_GET_VARS['DepartmentID'];
if ($DepartmentID !=-1) {
$Department_str = "(Courses.DeptID=\"".$DepartmentID."\") AND"; 
} 
else { $Department_str = ""; } 

[emerald558]

Thanks for the reply guys, however, this is an existing site with hundreds of pages that were written without $_GET or $HTTP_GET_VARS. And as I said, the code is working on another box, I am just trying to replicate it to another server. So there must be a configuration option for me to get it to work as is? Any other ideas? Thanks.

[suntra]

Yes. See register_globals <http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.directives.php#ini.register-globals>

[emerald558]

suntra,
That did it! Thanks!