I turned off magic quotes and tried that, it dident work. and withought the addslashes it still gives the same error Query failed: Unknown column 'something' in 'where clause' is there anyway to get it to look like the one that did work \'code_data\'' i also tried to use $str = $_GET['code'] and it used $str as the name lol. also it works with just $_GET when i add this into the URL [a href=\"http://localhost/codelist.php?code='pso'\" target=\"_blank\"]http://localhost/codelist.php?code='code'[/a] the ' ', is there syntax for this so i can place into that code without error. edit: nm i got it to work by adding that into the url thanks.