note 18267 added to function.eval

For some reason, all but one of the comments on this function were deleted about a month ago, which is unfortunate because the sole one they retained suggested a fix to the problem, but did not explain WHY the problem occurs. There is little sense allowing comments for fixes when said comments don't say WHY the problem is happening - this impedes the actual process of learning and subsequently causes further headaches down the road. For the second time, take note of something very simple about this function which I have had several people write to me and thank me for keeping things so straightforward, which is why I am relatively bitter that it was deleted, with everybody else's, to begin with: The reason you get parse errors when using EVAL on HTML or includes, is because the EVAL() function reads the target as if it were a standard block string. // For example, you would never do this: $string=""Hi," said the giant monkey."; // But you would do this, by escaping the quotes: $string="\"Hi,\" said the giant monkey."; // When you include HTML for parsing, of course you are going to have ""s all over the place <table width=200 align="center" bgcolor="#131313"> // etc... so when EVAL() opens this as a string, it will fail at the first instance of quotation marks. Here is the fix: // open file, be it from a database or a physical include $file=fopen("myinclude.inc","r"); $openedfile=fread($file,filesize($file)); // add slashes to prevent premature string escaping $string=addslashes($openedfile); // evaluate the code (note the value is returned in the function eval("\$string=\"$string\";"); // remove the slashes you used to protect your string during parsing $string=stripslashes($string); // note to PHP/Zend - where are the rejection emails we are supposed to receive if our comments don't meet your criteria? -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.eval.php http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+18267 http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+18267 http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+18267