title: php variable not returning what is expected
body: <p>I have an unordered list that's being generated from a database. Depending on the value of one of the returned fields, the li tag's class should be set to different values. Unfortunately they're all returning "inactive". I know this must be something simple, but I've been staring at it for hours and am just not seeing it.</p>
  
  <p>Here's the code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;ul class="tabs"&gt;
     &lt;? foreach ($tracks AS $track) {
      $active = (strtolower($track-&gt;shortname === 'dpp')) ? ' class="active"' : 'class="inactive"';
      echo "&lt;p&gt;".strtolower($track-&gt;shortname). " is ".$active."&lt;/p&gt;"; ?&gt;
      &lt;li &lt;?= $active; ?&gt;&gt;&lt;a href="#&lt;?= strtolower($track-&gt;shortname); ?&gt;"&gt;&lt;?= $track-&gt;name; ?&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
     &lt;? } ?&gt;
  &lt;/ul&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here's what is actually getting printed:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;ul class="tabs"&gt; 
      &lt;p&gt;dpp is class="inactive"&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;li class="inactive"&gt;&lt;a href="#dpp"&gt;Digital Path to Purchase&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; 
      &lt;p&gt;cre is class="inactive"&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;li class="inactive"&gt;&lt;a href="#cre"&gt;Fueling Creativity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt; 
  &lt;/ul&gt; 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It's obvious that the first one is returning $track-shortname of dpp, so why is the $active variable not getting set to "class=active"?</p>