how do I search for text in a variable? I am making a poll script that records your IP for one vote per person reasons. what I need to do is check for their IP in the string that I have it stored in, then if they have no voted I need to append their IP to the list. what would be the functions for these?

How will you be storing each ip? It sounds like you want to store all addresses in one long string like this:

192.168.32.1;255.136.54.128;...

If that's the case then you will need something like this: (assuming you seperate each address by a semicolon

PHP Code:

function test_ip (&$addresses, $address_check) {
//$addresses in form 192.168.32.1;255.136.54.128;
//$address_check in form 192.168.32.1

if (substr_count ($addresses, $address_check) == 0) {
 $addresses = $addresses . $address_check . ";"
 return false;
}
else {
  return true;
}
} 


great minds think alike, that is the method I was going to use. thanks.

No problem, that was a new function for me as well that I'm sure will come in handy down the road...but just to let you know this function is only in php v4 and on...through I don't think that should be a problem for anybody anymore.