Submit changing ' to ' automatically...? How to stop this from happening?

[superwormy]

I'm submiting a form where I have a field like this:

<input type="hidden" name="fname" value="O & # 3 9 ; Neil" />

For some stupid wierd reason, when I recieve the form on the server, and echo ($HTTP_POST_VARS['fname']);, I no longer the the ASCII equivalent for single quote, I get the single quote itself.

I need it to STAY as & # 3 9 ;

What is making this change, why is it happening, and how do I stop it? It doesn't make sense to me why when I post to PHP & # 3 9 ; and immediatelly echo out that variable, that PHP echos a single quote instead of that ASCII equivalent.

And no, a simple str_replace() afterwards is NOT what I'm looking for.

[stolzyboy]

you need it to stay as & # 3 9 ; ??

and you are echoing this out in html, well as far as i know, it is gonna stay that way, cuz html is gonna render that special character and show it to the browser

[superwormy]

Sorry, let me clarify, I dont' care if it gets displayed as a single quote in the browser, but I need to be able to print() it, and have it print IN THE HTML SOURCE as &#39; so that I can pass the ASCII equivalent it to the next query.

This is actually someone elses fault but now I have to fix it, cause its royally screwing things up.

[stolzyboy]

hmmm...

ok, you have something submit, and it passes say

stolzyboy's as fname

then when you want to pass it to your next query it is coming as a tick and not the ascii

are you posting with a form or using a querystring variable

and can you wrap htmlspecialchars around it to convert it back

[superwormy]

A little bit of an update here... this is kind interesting. Say I have a form like this:

<form method="post">

<input type="text" name="one" value="Keith & # 3 9 ;s House" />

<input type="text" name="two" value="" />

</form>

And I enter into box two the same string as the value in box one, Keith & # 3 9 ;s House, and I submit this form, when I recieve the data, form one will have Keith's House, while form two will have the correct, Dave $ # 3 9 ;s House

Any field with a value pre-set will have its ASCII equivalents convereted back to characters... not sure if this is a browser problem, or a PHP problem or...?

htmlspecialchars() is not an option at the moment, and it doesn't matter whether its POST or GET, both have the same behavoir...

[stolzyboy]

I think you have some crazy stuff going on that is just gonna have to be some troubleshooting to do

please lemme know what the skinny is when you get it figured out