eregreplace() and PHP 4.0.3

[Anon]

I have a product edit-x.com and I support both PHP3 and PHP4. In PHP3 the following code is required for DB insertion....

// Prep form vars for database input

$pub_date = "$frm_date_year"."$frm_date_month"."$frm_date_day";
$frm_headline = ereg_replace("'", "\'", $frm_headline);
$frm_by_line = ereg_replace("'", "\'", $frm_by_line);
$frm_teaser = ereg_replace("'", "\'", $frm_teaser);
$frm_keyword = ereg_replace("'", "\'", $frm_keyword);
$frm_well = ereg_replace("'", "\'", $frm_well);
$frm_pull_quote = ereg_replace("'", "\'", $frm_pull_quote);

In PHP4 this code is not nessesary. I am wondering I have a user who is using PHP version 4.0.3 and if the codes exists it actaually places a \ infront of all special characters. If the code is removed there is an error.

Can anyone help me solve this problem? I have also tried using \ and \\ as well as '' when trying to escape single quotes.

Any ideas would be of great help.

[theslinky]

Hi,

From the code, there is an anomaly:

when you do:
$frm_headline = ereg_replace("'", "\'", $frm_headline);
it should NOT put in \ characters. This is because you are escaping directly in the code. I don't know if I'm being clear. But let me give you an example:

$text = "Don't eat the cherries";

$text = ereg_replace("'", "\'", $text);

After the above code, the value in $text is STILL:

"Don't eat the cherries";

BUT, if you do this:

$text = ereg_replace("'", "\'", $text);

then, the value in $text becomes:

"Don\'t eat the cherries";

If you can show more of your code here (and point out on which line you get the error and/or where it puts in the ), then I can help further.

Meanwhile, I suggest doing this: use str_replace instead of ereg_replace. The function takes the exact same arguments but it doesn't try to do any regular expressions. I don't know how this may help, but I've always used str_replace whenever I had to add in \ characters or remove them.

-sridhar