if else dropdown help

[mystrymaster]

I have a dropdown with 5 choices

and I have a query

SELECT DISTINCT who FROM messages

I am storing the results of the query into an array using a counter

I need to display the choices that aren't already used in the database?

How would I do this other then using 5 different if (variable = array[0] && variable == array[1] || etc)

[dankstick]

Ok, so you're saying you have an array of the result from "SELECT DISTINCT who FROM messages"

example...

$result = mysql_query("SELECT DISTINCT who FROM messages");
while(list($stuff_there[]) = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
}

$stuff_there is the array from the database.

You also need to "display the choices that aren't already used in the database".

Do you have an array of the available choices?

I mean you can use the function in_array()

if(in_array($some_choice,$stuff_there)){
//$some_choice was found in the DB
}else{
//$some_choice was not found in DB
} 

Hope this helps