Stupid \" being added whenever I type "

Anon

I have a form that writes to a text file (which updates the news via the convienence of the web)... its a text area form and it passes the information into the text file using the following code... my problem is that if, in the $newsEntry field, I quote something or use any character that is a reserved character in PHP such as " , ' , and so on, it replaces it with backslash THEN the character. so " would become \" inside the text file. This is really annoying, if someone could help me it would be greatly appriciated.:

START PHP CODE (ITS A FUNCTION)
{

     $TheFile = "./data/news.txt"; // Points to news file

     $Open = fopen($TheFile,"a"); // Opens the file and is ready to write to the end of the file
     str_replace("\\\"","\"",$Open);
     $datepattern = "[0-9]+\.";
     if(($Open) && (eregi($datepattern, $date))) // If the file is open, then...
     {
        fwrite($Open, "\n$newsEntry\n$date\n"); // Write the date and news entry to the file
        fclose($Open);


        print("Write news fucntion completed <font color='#FF8000'><b>sucessfully!</b></font><tt> <br>Inputs: <br><br> Date: $date <br> Entry: $newsEntry</tt> <br><br><a href='../index.php'>Return to index.php</a>");

     }
     else
     {
         // If failure, print debugging info...
         print("<b>[DEBUGGING NEEDED]</b><br><br>");
         if(eregi($datepattern, $date))
         {
            print("The date input ( $date ) must begin and end with a digit.");
         }
         if($Open)
         {
            print("File '\"Open\" = $Open <br> File \"TheFile\" = $TheFile <br><br>");
         }

         print("Write News function <font color='#FF0000'><b>failed</b></font>!<br><tt> Inputs: <br><br> Date: $date <br> Entry: $newsEntry</tt><br><br><a href='../index.php'>Return to index.php</a>");
         print("<br><b>[END DEBUGGING]</b><br>");
     }

} // End Write News

END PHP CODE

Thanks

Drew
basement@mail.com

ianholmes01

Try the php manual and look under

stripslashes() and addslashes() in the function reference in the string bit.

it is to stop

$var = "Frank said "These stupid \ are really quite a good idea"";

escaping the string and creating a parse error.

where as

$var = "Frank said \"These stupid \ are really quite a good idea\"";

wouldn't create a parse error because the " specail character has been delimented and PHP has been told the " after each \ is not the end of the string.

Anon

I had a similar problem. if ianholmes' suggestion doesn't help, try looking into the "magic_quotes_runtime" and "gpc_magic_quotes" settings in PHP.