PHP Question

Howdy, I’m almost done with something awesome, but ran into a PHP road block.

When wordpress sees <?php the_permalink() ?> it prints out the permalink to the post which is awesome.

But what if I’m already in PHP and need to pull the permalink? Like this:

` echo “<img src=’$image_check’ width=’100′ height=’68’ class=’left’ />“; ‘

In that case the_permalink just prints out literally. How I get the variable in there?

Thanks!