Use Require_once() to include database connection variables correctly

[cen]

I'm a php newbie (but long time developer in other languages) and I'm trying some example db connections in "PHP, MySQL, & JavaScript". It shows an example file to include db connection variables (servername, username, password, database, etc.). I have a php file which has a handful of functions I wrote and one of them has a few SQL queries. For whatever reason, calling require_once in that file doesn't output any errors (I have E_ALL config'd) yet those variables in my database php file are null.I called an echo with all the variables within that function to see what the heck is going on and of course it prints a blank line. What in the world is out of scope? I have to be missing something simple.Here's an example of what I'm doingdb_login.php\[code\]<?php $db_server = 'localhost'; // ....?>\[/code\]functions.php\[code\]<?php require_once('db_login.php'); function myfunction() { echo "$db_server"; // ... }?>\[/code\]Call me crazy, but shouldn't this be simple enough to work?