passing variables

I'm trying to create a simple for that sends two field names to another page. My method is post, and my action is the name of the php file. In the php file I have a little chink of code checking to see if the fields are filled out or not. If not, it derects you back to the first form. Since it keeps sending me back to that form, I am assumin that the variables arn't getting passed. This is actually the chapter 12 tutorial out of PHP fast easy web developement 2nd edition featured on this site. Can anyone help me out?

While I don't have that book here, I would take a guess that this is a register globals problem. What I would try and do is to change the variables names in the php file a bit. For instance, if the variable name is :

$lastname

change it to:

$_POST['lastname']

and see if that helps...