NYCPHP Meetup

[Dan Cech]

Aaron,

As it happens I wrote the line in question, so I'll try and explain 
what's going on ;)

I think that you're confused about the effect of the magic_quotes_sybase 
php.ini directive.

Say you had the string:

I'm heading out on the road

With magic_quotes_gpc=On and magic_quotes_sybase=Off, the string coming 
in would look like:

I\'m heading out on the road

With magic_quotes_gpc and magic_quotes_sybase both On, the string coming 
in would look like:

I''m heading out on the road

So, in php/english the idea of that line is:

if (magic_quotes_sybase = On) {
   // replace '' with '
   return str_replace ('\'\'', '\'', $var)
} else {
   // use regular stripslashes
   return stripslashes ($var)
}

You could also write the line as:

return $sybase ? str_replace ("''", "'", $var) : stripslashes ($var);

to have the same effect, but I tend to prefer using single-quoted 
strings unless I'm actually embedding \n line breaks or variables, so I 
went with the single-quotes-and-slashes encoding.

Dan

Aaron Fischer wrote:
> I've been thinking of implementing the PHundamentals function for fixing 
> magic quotes when on a shared server:
> (http://www.nyphp.org/phundamentals/storingretrieving.php)
> 
> The line in question:
> return $sybase ? str_replace ('\'\'', '\'', $var) : stripslashes ($var);
> 
> I broke the str_replace and stripslashes out into separate code to test 
> and make sure I understand what was going on.
> 
> When testing, the str_replace wasn't working as is with the search and 
> replace string surrounded by single quotes.  After checking the php 
> manual , I changed the search and replace text to be surrounded by 
> double quotes and it worked correctly.
> 
> Should the PHundamentals function be changed to have double quotes? 
> 
> Here's the code I used to test:
> 
>     // test sybase str_replace with single quotes - doesn't appear to 
> produce desired result
>     echo '<br /><br />';
>     $sb_string = "I\'\'m heading out on the road";
>     $sb_string_new = str_replace('\'\'', '\'', $sb_string);
>     echo 'Sybase string is ' . $sb_string . '<br />';
>     echo 'String replace produces ' . $sb_string_new . '<br />';
>    
>     // test sybase str_replace with double quotes - appears to produce 
> desired result
>     echo '<br />';
>     $sb_string_new = str_replace("\'\'", "\'", $sb_string);
>     echo 'Sybase string is ' . $sb_string . '<br />';
>     echo 'String replace produces ' . $sb_string_new . '<br />';
> 
> And the output:
> Sybase string is I\'\'m heading out on the road
> String replace produces I\'\'m heading out on the road
> 
> Sybase string is I\'\'m heading out on the road
> String replace produces I\'m heading out on the road
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> -Aaron
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