Bug #43896 [Com]: htmlspecialchars() returns empty string on invalid unicode sequence

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=43896&edit=1 ID: 43896 Comment by: hardin at boulder dot nist dot gov Reported by: arnaud dot lb at gmail dot com Summary: htmlspecialchars() returns empty string on invalid unicode sequence Status: Closed Type: Bug Package: Strings related Operating System: * PHP Version: 5CVS-2008-07-15 Assigned To: cataphract Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: cataphract, thanks for looking at this. When I try your tests, neither line generates any output. I am using PHP Version 5.3.5-1ubuntu7.2. Any ideas where I should look for a problem? Could this be a server configuration issue? Thanks. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-08-11 09:38:26] cataphract@php.net I can't reproduce that: <?php echo htmlentities("some\x80 text&gt;", ENT_QUOTES | ENT_IGNORE, 'UTF-8', false), "\n"; echo htmlentities("some\x80 text&lt;", ENT_QUOTES | ENT_IGNORE, 'UTF-8'); gives the expected some text&gt; some text&amp;lt; ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-08-11 04:59:39] hardin at boulder dot nist dot gov echo "test = " . htmlentities("some text", ENT_QUOTES | ENT_IGNORE, 'UTF-8', false); returns: test = echo "test = " . htmlentities("some text", ENT_QUOTES | ENT_IGNORE, 'UTF-8'); returns: test = some text The latter is the expected result, but why does adding the fourth parameter, to prevent double-encoding, cause this function (and also htmlspecialchars) to return the empty string? How can this be prevented? I have a form that I want to redisplay to users until all their input has been corrected, preserving their responses in the fields so they can start from what worked. The users are international, with names containing lots of accent marks and utf-8 characters, and some of the input is mathematical, with Greek characters and such, so I want to assume the input is utf-8 to preserve all of this, without messing it up on multiple passes. Thanks for your help. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-02-06 21:02:51] shaun dot bruno at gmail dot com Ah... I realized I need 5.3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2011-02-06 20:58:07] shaun dot bruno at gmail dot com I'm still having this problem - running php 5.2.15 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2010-10-11 03:16:23] cataphract@php.net Noted addition of ENT_IGNORE in the manual entries for htmlspecialchars and htmlentities. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=43896 -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=43896&edit=1