found_posts is always zero

In link-template.php:

function next_posts_link($label=’Next Page »’, $max_page=0) {
global $paged, $wpdb, $wp_query;
$foo = $wp_query->found_posts;
echo “found_posts = ” . $foo;
if ( !$max_page ) {
$max_page = $wp_query->max_num_pages;
}

and so on.

This always prints a zero.

Unless a max_page is supplied by the template, max_page (which is computed from found_posts in query.php) will be zero. Consequently, previous entries will never be shown.