Re: base64-encoding in cookies?

I wrote: > A campus web server (not under my control) returns an authentication > string in a cookie named AUTH. The cookie's value is an encrypted, > base64 encoded string. Unfortunately, when I examine $_COOKIE['AUTH'], > it is clear that all of the '+' characters have been replaced with a ' ' > character in the base64 string. Why is this? Obviously, this corrupts > the data and makes it impossible to base64-decode the string correctly. > I believe this is a php issue and not, say, an apache issue because a > perl program can correctly authenticate the same cookie based on perl's > $ENV{'HTTP_COOKIE'}. i.e., the perl cookie contains the original '+'. > Does anyone know how to make php (v5.1.5) do the right thing with base64 > encoded cookies? This problem seems to be http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=35523 where it was dismissed as "Bogus" without any explanation why. It seems that '+' characters are intentionally converted to spaces in all cookies. This makes no sense to me. Can someone explain it? Thanks, Fletcher