#33847 [Bgs]: fgetcsv incorrectly treats backslash

ID: 33847 User updated by: vasilyev at math dot uchicago dot edu Reported By: vasilyev at math dot uchicago dot edu Status: Bogus Bug Type: Filesystem function related Operating System: OS X (irrelevant) PHP Version: 5.0.4 New Comment: I understand your concern that changing the behavior might break BC. However, not changing the behavior makes fgetcsv() not compatible with other csv applications (gnumeric for example). I suggest to introduce an option in php.ini that would make fgetcsv() work the old way. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2005-07-25 04:18:52] iliaa@php.net Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at http://www.php.net/manual/ and the instructions on how to report a bug at http://bugs.php.net/how-to-report.php The current behaviour is based on how various csv parsers work, any deviation from that would result in BC break. Therefor this functionality is not going to change. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2005-07-25 01:00:00] vasilyev at math dot uchicago dot edu Description: ------------ This has been already mentioned in several bugs, that were all dismissed as bogus. Nevertheless, I believe there is a serious problem with the way fgetcsv treats backslash. Example: "a\","b" produces Array ( [0] => a\",b" ) iliia@php.net says that this is an expected behavior since backslash is an escaping character. Well, if this were true then "a\"b","c" would give Array ( [0] => a"b [1] => c ) while in fact you get Array ( [0] => a\"b [1] => c ) Another scenario: what do you do if you want to have a backslash at the end of a field (and let's say there are commas in that field, so we do have to use quotes). Well the natural answer is to escape the backslash: "a\\","b" but this would produce Array ( [0] => a\\ [1] => b ) It seems that the only thing a backslash does is making fgetcsv() not treat the following quote as an enclosure mark, without actually stripping the backslash. This is not escaping. There are two ways this can be fixed: 1.Make backslash an escaping character. This would further deviate fgetcsv() parsing of CSV files from the wide-spread understanding of what a CSV format is. 2.Treat backslash as any other character. I would prefer the second choice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=33847&edit=1