Regarding serialize

Hello, I have came across some strange behavior today, after some time I got it to the simplest form to reproduce. I have not yet attempted to patch/investigate the code within php source, I want to first confirm this is indeed a problem and I haven't just had a long day, as well as verify it is not a known issue. I have searched the bug tracker; found nothing similar. Below is reproducible code, tested on php 5.3.0 release build, as well as the latest snapshot and a random version installed in a yum repository (5.1.6). Regards, -Chris -- class testSerialize { protected $_foo = Array(); } $base = new testSerialize; $str1 = 'O:13:"testSerialize":1:{s:7:"*_foo";a:0:{}}'; $str2 = serialize($base); var_dump($str1); var_dump($str2); var_dump($str1 == $str2); var_dump(escapeshellarg($str1)); var_dump(escapeshellarg($str2));