read file as string for output

Anon

Why is this not giving me hte desired results?
<PRE>
.
.
.
if (!$file=fopen("test.txt", "r")) {
echo("Could not display information?");
} else {
$text = fread($file, 5000);
}
.
.
.
printf("$text \n");
.
.
.
</PRE>
It produces an error saying "Warning: printf(): too few arguments in commonCrow.php on line 213", when there is a '%' char in the input file(test.txt).

Any suggestion as to a work around?

Marcel.

Anon

You have the wrong syntax for printf:
printf("$text \n");
should be

printf('%s%s', $text, "\n");

Anon

OK, but why bother with printf() in the first place?

echo '' . $text . '';

is going to be faster yet and guaranteed safe.

Anon

Hey do it however you like, he just asked what was wrong with his script amd I provided him with the answer. By the way I didn't know you were the webmaster for amazon.com. That is the only place that gets enough traffic for it to make adifference. printf() in my mind is a lot easier to manage especially in larger scripts, and I have never seen a difference in performance. Why nit-pick the small stuff?

Anon

Oh Yeah one more thing

Kirk Parker wrote:

OK, but why bother with printf() in the first place?

echo '' . $text . '';

is going to be faster yet and guaranteed safe. How is this guaranteed safe when it isn't even correctm you use single quotes in your statement and still escape the double quotes

Anon

Your ire speaks for itself, I guess.

Anon

How could you assume that your answer wasn't gonna receive some criticism?

Anon

Well...didn't know this would be sooo controversial! hahahaha.....seriously, I think you all missed the point of my question.

The script worked, as far as outputting what I wanted, however, if the file contained a % sign, it would fall over and give me the error I posted. Now to get back to my question....how do I escape html chars in atext file I want to output?

addslashes? htmlspecialchars? An example would really be appreciated!

Thanks,
Marcel.

Anon

Correction: not addslashes, stripslashes....sheeeeesh I need some sleep.🙂

Marcel.

Anon

Well then Marcel the answer is simple, the reason you got the error is because $text contains a percent sign and a printf() statement takes a percent sign has a place holder for an element that is defined at the end of the string like in my first example. so why not just use print instead of printf()?

Anon

Right. Thanks Louie....much appreciated!

Louie, quick question, under what context would htmlspecialchars() apply? Is this not to display all chars, and not have html chars be inerpreted as code rather than plain text?

Oh and thanks for your frankness in answering my question. I too get rather annoyed when someone nitpicks working code rather than answering the question. Appreciate your time. 🙂

Marcel.

Anon

To tell you the truth Marcel, I am not too sure, I know that if you have a string like
$string = "something";
And you run htmlspecialchars() on it and print it will show up like something on the screen. I would assume you could run it on data submitted from a form to keep jokers from putting html into a form input and screwing up your formatting.

Anon

Yeah come to think of it I remember reading something to that effect. Sounds sensible actually.

Thanks,
Marcel.