#28554 [Com]: arg_separator should default to & instead of &

ID: 28554 Comment by: andbe611 at student dot liu dot se Reported By: kavol at email dot cz Status: Bogus Bug Type: PHP options/info functions Operating System: Linux (applies for any?) PHP Version: 4.3.6 New Comment: I understand that you won't change the default setting of arg_separator. What surprises me is that one of the finest open source applications is shipped with a default that breaks the W3C standard. People are complaining at Microsoft for breaking standards. Wouldn’t the right decision be to show MS that we can do better? Why not ship a product that does adhere to the specification? I know that you can change arg_separator in the php.ini, but most sites just run the vanilla php.ini. Wouldn’t it be great if we could help them produce standards compliant sites? The use of ini_set forces people to fix something that shouldn’t be broken in the first place and it doesn't work for code that uses ini_get to get the separator (like Pear Net_URL). Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2004-05-28 12:46:42] derick@php.net You can use ini_set() too for this, if you use it before using session_start(). We are not going to change the default. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2004-05-28 11:24:27] kavol at email dot cz > Please do not submit the same bug more than once. > An existing bug report already describes this very > problem. Please, could you post the number? I searched for "arg_separator" ... do you mean #27965? - sorry, I thought that it is marked as bogus because it is a duplicate of #15504, so I did not read that thoroughly. My fault. > we will also NOT change this until there is a browser > that borks on this. I am sorry, I (and m-w.com) do not know the word "bork" - is that typo? And what is more important, some broken (?) browser or html standard, parsers and good browsers? > Also, you can change this in php.ini if you really want > to do this. Yes. And I can fork the php codebase and make a version which behaves correctly - my report was about changing the default and not about what can I do with my php.ini ... I do not see any reason for making the wrong behaviour default. In addition, as mentioned in #27965, not everyone has the possibility to change the defaults, and many webmasters leave the default settings untouched because they believe that these are optimal or simply because they do not understand that. :-( ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2004-05-28 10:38:17] derick@php.net Please do not submit the same bug more than once. An existing bug report already describes this very problem. Even if you feel that your issue is somewhat different, the resolution is likely to be the same. Thank you for your interest in PHP. Search before submitting a bug, we will also NOT change this until there is a browser that borks on this. Also, you can change this in php.ini if you really want to do this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2004-05-28 10:11:45] kavol at email dot cz Description: ------------ Many php-powered sites produce invalid html code because of php is appending &PHPSESSID... instead &PHPSESSID... to the links in documents. This was already reported as a bug and the solution is to set arg_separator; however, since php is closely related to html, it would be nice if it would be able to produce correct html with the default configuration. So, even if you can take this rather as a wish than a bug, please change the default configuration value of arg_separator.output to "&". btw, a lot of thanks for PHP! p.s. sorry for my English ... taken from http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/charset.html#h-5.3.2 - Authors should also use "&" in attribute values since character references are allowed within CDATA attribute values. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=28554&edit=1