Bug #14879 Updated: ereg_replace incorrectly functioning

ID: 14879 User updated by: jhise@linuxforbusiness.org Reported By: jhise@linuxforbusiness.org Status: Open Bug Type: Scripting Engine problem Operating System: Linux-Mandrake 8.1 PHP Version: 4.0.6 New Comment: <? ## Assign a bit of HTML to two source variables # $space_source_text = $null_source_text = "<b>PHP</b> <i>is</i> a useful <u>tool</u>"; ## Replace a substring within the the source variables # with another substring $null_source_text = ereg_replace("", "|" $null_source_text); $space_source_text = ereg_replace(" ", "|", $space_source_text); ## Print the new values of the source variables # print("This is the result of calling ereg_replace with an empty parameter.<hr>$null_source_text<br><br><br>"); print("This is the result of calling ereg_replace with a space as the value of the parameter.<hr>$space_source_text"); ## Conclusion # # To me it seems that there are two significant points to make about the behaviour of ereg_replace as demonstrated # in this example. # # The first point is that, when passing an empty value in the first parameter, the ereg_replace function inserts # the second parameter between every character in the string, therefor increasing the overall size of the string. # It is inserting -- not replacing as the function name implies # # The second point is that, when passing an empty value in the first parameter, the ereg_replace function does # not evaluate the HTML tags so that they are correctly rendered to the browser. # # Please keep in mind that I have yet to see the definition of ereg_replace. # # At first, I thought the ereg_replace function was possibly checking to see if the first parameter was empty, and if # so, return execution immediatly to the caller. However, this doesn't appear to be the case because it is obviously # transversing the character array because it is inserting the second parameter between each character. # # I'm guessing that PHP does some internal escaping of HTML characters and the empty first parameter is somehow # goofing up the translation back to clean HTML # ## ?> Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2002-01-05 18:33:02] jhise@linuxforbusiness.org <? ## Assign a bit of HTML to two source variables # $space_source_text = $null_source_text = "<b>PHP</b> <i>is</i> a useful <u>tool</u>"; ## Replace a substring within the the source variables # with another substring $null_source_text = ereg_replace("", "|", $null_source_text); $space_source_text = ereg_replace(" ", "|", $space_source_text); ## Print the new values of the source variables # print("This is the result of calling ereg_replace with an empty parameter.<hr>$null_source_text<br><br><br>"); print("This is the result of calling ereg_replace with a space as the value of the parameter.<hr>$space_source_text"); ## Conclusion # # To me it seems that there are two significant points to make about the behaviour of ereg_replace as demonstrated # in this example. # # The first point is that, when passing an empty value in the first parameter, the ereg_replace function inserts # the second parameter between every character in the string, therefor increasing the overall size of the string. # It is inserting -- not replacing as the function name implies # # The second point is that, when passing an empty value in the first parameter, the ereg_replace function does # not evaluate the HTML tags so that they are correctly rendered to the browser. # # Please keep in mind that I have yet to see the definition of ereg_replace. # # At first, I thought the ereg_replace function was possibly checking to see if the first parameter was empty, and if # so, return execution immediatly to the caller. However, this doesn't appear to be the case because it is obviously # transversing the character array because it is inserting the second parameter between each character. # # I'm guessing that PHP does some internal escaping of HTML characters and the empty first parameter is somehow # goofing up the translation back to clean HTML # ## ?> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=14879&edit=1