PHP 4.0 Bug #5359: post'ed form veriables get unwanted backslashes

From: terry@terrym.com Operating system: Red Hat 6.2 Linux PHP version: 4.0.0 PHP Bug Type: Scripting Engine problem Bug description: post'ed form veriables get unwanted backslashes Hello Upon upgrading from PHP3 to PHP4, an app that had been working fine broke due to the addition of backslashes where there should not have been any. Thought this would be good to add to the incompatibilities page at: http://www.php.net/version4/incompatibilities.php Here is an example script that can be run under PHP3 and PHP4 with different results: ------------------------ <html> <body> <? if($CONTENT_LENGTH) { echo "var1=$var1<p>\nvar2=$var2<p>\n"; } else { ?> <form method=post action= <? echo $PHP_SELF; ?>> <input type=hidden name=var1 value="This='is it'"> <input type=hidden name=var2 value="This \(was\)"> <input type=submit> </form> <? } ?> </body> </html> ------------------------ This produced the following results: Under PHP3: var1=This='is it' var2=This \(was\) Under PHP4 var1=This=\'is it\' var2=This \\(was\\) Note the extra unwanted back slashes, is this a bug? or a new feature? (The above script and results were cut and pasted to avoid misstakes.) Thank you for your attention to this matter Terry