It's me again, I cannot believe that I made such a stupid mistake, I took a second look at my post, and then a second look at my code, there is nothing wrong with the code in the book if you type it in correctly the whole statement to advise people that they had forgotten to enter their gender was there, here's the faulty part:
if ($gender == "M") { echo '<p><b>Good day, Sir!</b></p>'; } elseif ($gender == "F") { echo '<p><b>Good day, Madam!</b></p>'; } else { '<p><b>You forgot to enter your gender</b></p>'; }
Can you see what I forgot to do duh!
I forgot to put echo in front of that statement, so easy to be blind to such an obvious error, as a technician I learned always look for the obvious and keep it simple, this, until now, had not extended to my programming skills.
I am posting this so that other newbie programmers don't fall into the same trap of looking for everything else except what is right in front of their nose.
Ian