I cant see why you are getting the letter 'z' (assuming $msgContent was referenced properly) . Complete code will be helpful to debug the problem. Also, Heredoc syntax will be more helpful in your situation. And usage of global keyword is strongly discouraged in favor of $GLOBALS superglobal array http://php.net/GLOBALS http://php.net/heredoc Kranthi. http://goo.gl/e6t3 -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php