Membership Signup Form Syntax question

Hi All,

It's time to feel silly again...

But, I could use some guidance regarding the correct syntax to use in this situation.

In a membership signup form, I want to pull the number of records allowed (maxRecords) from a text field called “entry_level_records”, in a single record editor called “subscriber_level_values”.

At the top of the page I loaded the records with:
list($subscriber_level_valuesRecords, $subscriber_level_valuesMetaData) = getRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'subscriber_level_values',
'where' => whereRecordNumberInUrl(1),
'limit' => '1',
));
$subscriber_level_valuesRecord = @$subscriber_level_valuesRecords[0]; // get first record
I defined a variable as:
<?php $records_allowed = $subscriber_level_valuesRecord['entry_level_records']; ?>
I can print out the correct value of the $records_allowed variable with:
<?php echo $records_allowed ; ?>
But when I insert the variable in the "create access list" code as below, I get a 0 as the maxRecords value.
($userNum, 'master_subscription_pages', '6', '(echo $records_allowed)', '1234567890'),
I've also tried
'echo $records_allowed'
'echo [$records_allowed]'
'(echo [$records_allowed])'

and they also rendered 0 for the maxRecords value.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Jerry Kornbluth