Php removes part of string

Question

I have this simple string variable:

$query="SELECT * FROM striscie AS previous, striscie AS current WHERE previous.linea=current.linea AND current.ident=$striscia AND previous.position<current.position AND previous.position>current.position-$stops";

yet, when I echo or use it, it turns to:

SELECT * FROM striscie AS previous, striscie AS current
WHERE previous.linea=current.linea AND current.ident=897524 AND previous.positioncurrent.position-3
SELECT * FROM striscie AS previous, striscie AS current
WHERE previous.linea=current.linea AND current.ident=920173 AND previous.positioncurrent.position-2

By deleting the whole part of the string. I tried restarting Apache to no avail. What might it be?

Answer 1

< is being treated as HTML by the browser. Don't blindly output stuff like that.