Ok.. I'm not a newbie I thought.. I do have experience with PHP, but I never suffered from this error. I used on my own redhat 8.0 server the following test-script: if($action=="test"){ echo "Test";} I tried it to run with: 127.0.0.1/index.php?action=test It doesn't print anything. (which means I even can't print hello world :P) Oh, other variable constructions like $bla = "blah" . echo $bla etc. do work.. With regards, Michel Bakkenes J2ee developer Infolook BV Zevenbergen, The Netherlands