note 41220 added to function.stripslashes

There is a very important thing to keep in mind about this function: it is NOT the reverse of addslashes() addslashes() will only backslash ', ", \, and NUL stripslashes() does not care if the character being backslashed is one of these four; it will strip the slash out regardless. According to bug report http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=19947 , this is not a bug (as apparently stripslashes was never intended to be the exact opposite of the addslashes() function). This means that a string such as \"this is a\ test\" will become "this is a test" as opposed to "this is a\ test" Why would this cause problems? If you are depending on stripslashes to perform the exact opposite of addslashes(), you can potentially mess up your data. Take the following example: <? $var = "\\\"this is a\\ test\\\"\\n"; echo "var: $var\n"; echo "stripslashes: " . stripslashes($var) . "\n"; ?> Output: var: \"this is a\ test\"\n stripslashes: "this is a test"n Obviously, this is not what you were expecting. If you wish to have a function that is TRULY the opposite of addslashes(), here are two ways you can do so: Go through character by character and when you find a slash, see if the next character is in your list (', ", \, NUL). If so, remove the slash. Use a simple regex to accomplish the same thing as above. <? function my_stripslashes($text) { $char_list = "\"'\\0\\\\"; return preg_replace("/\\\\([$char_list])/", '$1', $text); } ?> NOTE: This function has not been FULLY tested, but it worked for my simple test cases. ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.stripslashes.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+41220 Delete -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+41220&report=yes Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+41220&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php