unexpected escape characters in text email...

[ericbaze]

I use PHP and MySQL for submission and processing of new account applications via our web site. The applications are submitted through HTML forms and PHP to a MySQL table, then the data is retreived similarly and sent as a plain text email to our customer service department.

For one reason or another, sometime's applicants need to use the single quote (') or apostrophe () -- examples would be Macys or D'Amelio. This is resulting in a problem -- the email converts D'Amelio to D\'Amelio and Macys to Macy\s.

I've tried structuring the email content as both

 $email_content1 = "Dear".$sirnm." ".$lname.",\n";

and

 $email_content2 = "Dear $fname $lname,\n";

but I have the same result either way. The content of the MySQL table does show the text properly as D'Amelio. Also, I'm using a basic mail(); command with no specific headers in it.

My assumption is that it's one of three things -- a) I need to define the mail headers more specifically, b) I need to restructure the MySQL query, or c) I need to restructure my variables.

Does anyone have an idea as to how I can correct this?

Thanks,

Eric Baze, Creative Specalist
ConferenceCall.com
[e-mail]

[n00854180t]

I think this is caused because PHP reserves those characters. You should check the submitted string for those characters and turn them into \' or `. I think that will fix it. Not sure though.

[ericbaze]

Sorry -- need to post a slight correction:

D'Amelio shows up in the text email as D\'Amelio (not D'Amelio -- typo on my part).

Thanks,

Eric

[ericbaze]

I think this is caused because PHP reserves those characters. >You should check the submitted string for those characters and >turn them into \' or `. I think that will fix it. Not sure though.

I understand what your saying, but consider the following:

$email_content1 = "$lname";
$lname = "D'Amelio".

It would make sense if I got a variable error, or if (\') was converted to ('), since (') is reserved; however, why would is convert (') to (\')?

Wouldn't that be like a line break being converted to (\n), rather than (\n) being converted to a line break?

[ericbaze]

stripslashes(); fixed the problem!

$raw = "foo";
$content = stripslashes($raw);

Thanks,

Eric