title: Null value showing, despite if statement to get rid of it
body: <p>I have the following code (see below) ... the if statement should be checking to see if $re_broker has a value (and is not null) ... however, the if statement is displaying the code with a "null" value. </p>
  
  <p>I've tried an if statement with each of the following...</p>
  
  <pre><code>// isset($re_broker)
  // $re_broker!=''
  // !empty($re_broker)
  // $re_broker!='null'
  // $re_broker!=null
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>... but none have worked.  Any reason why this is happening? And how to fix it? I'm sure it is something simple, but I can't figure it out.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
  if(!empty($re_broker)) { ?&gt;
       &lt;div class="auth-box auth-outline broker"&gt;
            &lt;div class="auth-txt"&gt;&lt;?php echo $re_broker; ?&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
       &lt;/div&gt;
       &lt;div class="clear"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;?php
  }
  ?&gt;
  </code></pre>