halojoy, thank you very much for your attention to my problems today. i beg your pardon, but i don't understand what you're telling me above (not the PHP color stuff, but the mail() stuff). i'll try to get a better bearing on what you've said in the meantime.
Edit:
could you please cite my code, or provide an illustration? i'm sorry to ask. or maybe a link to the appropriate php manual page? thank you!
edit2:
maybe i'm totally off on this, but it sounds like you might not have taken in the problem to which i seek a solution. maybe you have, and i just can't get around my confusion. what i want is for my received mail to show me who sent it. my form provides a text area for the sender to enter his or her e-mail. in the "post-action page" (what is the appropriate way to reference that? terminology?) a variable, $email, is assigned the $_POST['email'] string data which i attempt to send in my mail function so i can see their entry from the e-mail field on the previous page.
edit3: can someone please help me w/ how to assign the parameters to mail()?
i have modified my code to the following:
mail("$to", stripslashes($message),
stripslashes($headers));
where $to represents a string containing my, and my business partner's e-mail address, so i could use it to echo on my sent-mail results page, thanks.php-- to further help me keep track of which mail() argument did what.
the $message string represents the $_POST['message'] data from the form <textarea> in my contact.php form.
$headers is a string which contains "From: $email", where $email contains the second and final form data, <input text="email"...>
that form text field is where the message composer is supposed to place his or her e-mail address. so, the way i see it, the arguments in mail() are as follows:
mail("myAdminEmail@myWebDomain.com", message-body, From: sender@sendersISP.com)
where is my mail() function incorrect? do i have something misplaced, or missing altogether?
thank you for reading.
EDIT4:
what is the proper way to read the Function definitions at PHP.net? i must be interepreting something wrong because when i look there, i don't see an explanation for the proper argument syntax, as i have seen examples for other PHP functions in the manual.
i see that when i test-submit my contact form, the mail that i receive shows my intended message body instead in the subject line. so, i'm guessing that i need to have another argument in my mail() function... what do i add, and where do i need to put it? i suppose trial and error will eventually yeild the answer, but i'd really like to know "why" from a users manual definition.
