PHP - $_POST variables mixing with variables having the same name
<p>On the same page I have</p>

<pre><code>$hello = 'Hello!';
$_POST['hello'] = '123';
</code></pre>

<p>If I echo $hello, instead of getting 'Hello!' I get '123'.
How should I handle variables and $_POST variables with the same name?</p>

<p>This is an example of the real problem:</p>

<p>I have a signup form that looks like this (here's a minified sample of fields).
Each input field has a label and the string variable in the label has the same name as the input.</p>

<pre><code>&lt;form id="form1" action="post.php"&gt;
  &lt;span class="label"&gt;&lt;?=$fullname?&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
  //$fullname='Please enter your name';
  &lt;input name="fullname" id="fullname" type="text"&gt;

  &lt;span class="label"&gt;&lt;?=$email?&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
  //$email='Please enter your email';
  &lt;input name="email" id="email" type="text"&gt;

  &lt;input name="button1" id="button1" type="submit"&gt;
&lt;/form&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>When I submit the form I post it to the same page and I display the values the user had filled out. Only that now, instead of $fullname displaying the value of the variable $fullname, it displays the value of $_POST['fullname']. Why does this happen?</p>
