I have a form that I would like to vary slightly depending on the context in which is it being used, changing things such as the form submit button text and the submit function. To indicate the context, I simply need to pass a string to the form function. According to http://api.drupal.org/api/function/drupal_get_form/6, "Any additional arguments are passed on to the functions called by drupal_get_form(), including the unique form constructor function. For example, the node_edit form requires that a node object be passed in here when it is called." So, I define my variable and call my function: $create = 'create'; $output .= drupal_get_form('my_form_function', $create); As indicated in the text from the page (mentioned above), the node_add() function does something similar: $output = drupal_get_form($type .'_node_form', $node); Within my form function, I assign the button value with a case statement based on that. However, when I run the function, I get no value for my button, and a breakpoint shows that there is no value for my variable. Stepping through some more, I find that when it gets to my form function, my parameter that I passed from my call to drupal_get_form is actually the second one, and there is a skeleton $form_state array passed as the first parameter. When I add $form_state as the first parameter in my form and move $created to the second one, it works fine. I can see in line 371 of form.inc where the form function is called using $form = call_user_func_array(isset($callback) ? $callback : $form_id, $args); and at that point $args[0] is basically $form_state and $args[1] is my parameter that is passed ($created in this case). My question is, why this seeming discrepancy between what the docs indicate and what is actually passed to my form function? I haven't seen anything written in PDD or online that indicates that I have to have $form_state as the first parameter in my form function definition when I want to pass it a variable. Am I missing something? Thanks. Steve