Bug #66826 [Asn->Csd]: date() stopped accepting "\0" as a valid format value

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=66826&edit=1 ID: 66826 Updated by: cmb@php.net Reported by: butkus dot justas at gmail dot com Summary: date() stopped accepting "\0" as a valid format value -Status: Assigned +Status: Closed Type: Bug Package: Date/time related Operating System: Linux PHP Version: 5.5.9 Assigned To: derick Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: Active support for PHP 5.6 has ended, so I'm closing this ticket. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2015-08-18 17:24:56] cmb@php.net As <https://3v4l.org/1vQ94> shows, this issue is fixed as of PHP 7.0.0alpha1. Furthermore, the behavior until PHP 5.2.1 was not really correct, because the null byte in the format string was simply skipped (compare the string lengths). To fix the issue for PHP 5.6, RETURN_STRINGL() instead of RETURN_STRING would have to be used[1], but the actual length of the string is only known inside of date_format, so this would require some changes. I'm not sure if that's worth the trouble, considering that the PHP 7 behavior is already correct, and that a null byte in a format string is probably rather uncommon. [1] <https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/php-5.6.12/ext/date/php_date.c#L3084> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2014-03-05 14:21:57] butkus dot justas at gmail dot com Description: ------------ This might be either string handling related, or date-specific string handling related, but starting with PHP 5.2.1 and still occurring in PHP 5.6.0alpha2, date() (as well as DateTime::format()) does not accept "\0" (NUL) as valid formatting character as valid and truncates at that point. Likely it means that at some point date() started treating $format value as null-terminated string. Before PHP 5.2.1 the NUL byte was preserved in formatting output. Reason behind using such characters: to have some clear and easily distinguishable separator which doesn't take up visual space in output. Test script: --------------- <?php date_default_timezone_set( 'UTC' ); $time = strtotime( '2014-01-31' ); $format = "\\Fm\0 j, Y"; var_dump( date( $format, $time ) ); $datetime = new DateTime( '@' . $time ); var_dump( $datetime->format( $format ) ); Expected result: ---------------- string(12) "F01 31, 2014" string(12) "F01 31, 2014" Actual result: -------------- string(3) "F01" string(3) "F01" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=66826&edit=1