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

From: Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2011 23:01:55 +0000
Subject: Bug #43896 [Com]: htmlspecialchars() returns empty string on invalid unicode sequence
References: 1  Groups: php.bugs 
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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:

My humble apologies...
I am working on two servers and I got confused as to which was which.  The problem you could not
reproduce was because I was actually running PHP Version 4.3.9.  On PHP Version 5.3.5 it works as
expected.  I regret wasting your time with my error.


Previous Comments:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2011-08-12 22:18:04] hardin at boulder dot nist dot gov

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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
[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

------------------------------------------------------------------------


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