Q: smarty php variable not appearing I am using the smarty templating system for php. I have the following within a .tpl file:
 <a href=\"{/literal}/view/{$tablename}/

where $tablename is a php variable defined in the php file that calls the .tpl
$tablename = 'string';

However running the script only   
href="/view//"

is visible. What am I doing wrong?

A: This
$tablename = 'string';

is not enough to populate a variable into Smarty.
You need to use
$Smarty->assign("tablename", $tablename);

$Smarty being your initialized Smarty object, of course.

A: Are you assigning to variable to the smarty instance? e.g with assign()?
 $smarty->assign('tablename', $tablename);

See also the manual page on assigning variables from PHP
