Question: I've started using PHP lately... all is good except one thing.
I am trying to call a function from another php file... but it's not working.
It's probably really simple, but I haven't found anything useful to solve it.

I've used "required\_once " but it still does not work.
Does anyone know where I'm going wrong?

```
<?php
require_once "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/me/database_functions.php";
require_once "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/me/encode_decode.php";

if (isset($_POST['url']) && $_POST['url'] != "http://")
{
//Get the url posted
$long_url = $_POST['url'];

//Create record in long_url table and return it's id
$long_id = create_long_url($long_url);

```

Everything works so far.. But
the problem is this next function call.. it doesn't even go into the function.

```
$short_url = $encode($long_id);

}...............etc...

```

encode\_decode.php looks a bit like this...

```
<?php //encode_decode.php

function encode($number)
{
echo "<br />in encode";
//Encode numer to 6 char 
$s = strtr(rtrim(base64_encode(pack('i', $number)), '='), '+/', '-_');

echo $s;

return $s;
}

```

Any help is greatly appreciated...

Answer: 
You don't need the $ before your function call

```
$short_url = $encode($long_id);

```

should be

```
$short_url = encode($long_id);

```
remove the dollar sign from in front of the function. a dollar sign in PHP indicates a variable