ok thanks for the reply first, here is the whole thing i am creating a user send your picture as ecard thing, the user goes to the site upload their picture, then be able to send it to family and friends etc, boring i know but it has a small twist to it. so when the user uploads the picture or image that's where the $IMG_WIDTH goes in, then the script takes you to a bunch of templates to put up the card together, so the $IMG_WIDTH is a value which is variable once you uploaded, in the file1.htm and file2.htm i set 2 values for the table width of the page one of them is a fixed 750 the other is width={IMG_WIDTH}. now the script if/else is working on the == 750 the else works fine on the < it just doesn't read the else. i just tried a small thing which i put a small echo"img=$IMG_WIDTH" on top of the page and it's reading the img width fine just the ELSE statement is not working in the < less than. Thanks for your time.