PHPMailer

[antoniof]

Please, can anybody tell me what is the purpose of function EncodeHeader($String,$String), from class.PHPMailer.php (http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/) specifically since I am suppossed to come up with documentation for a user who does not know anything about source code...I understand the regular expressions used, but I can't visualize the input vs outcome, and what is the purpose of such encoding. Is it for the server? is it trying to figure out attachments or other binary elements? anything would help me a lot at work...thank you very much!
(I only have two months of experience with php...)

[thorpe]

i dont see any such method in there docs.

[antoniof]

function EncodeHeader ($str, $position = 'text') {
$x = 0;

  switch (strtolower($position)) {
    case 'phrase':
            //if ASCII;
      if (!preg_match('/[\200-\377]/', $str)) {
        // Can't use addslashes as we don't know what value has magic_quotes_sybase.
        $encoded = addcslashes($str, "\0..\37\177\\\"");
        //This will protect original, innocent backslashes from stripcslashes.
        if (($str == $encoded) && !preg_match('/[^A-Za-z0-9!#$%&\'*+\/=?^_`{|}~ -]/', $str))
          return ($encoded);
        else
          return ("\"$encoded\"");
      }
                                    //(")
      $x = preg_match_all('/[^\040\041\043-\133\135-\176]/', $str, $matches);
      break;
    case 'comment':
      $x = preg_match_all('/[()"]/', $str, $matches);
      // Fall-through
    case 'text':
    default:
      $x += preg_match_all('/[\000-\010\013\014\016-\037\177-\377]/', $str, $matches);
      break;
  }

  if ($x == 0)
    return ($str);

  $maxlen = 75 - 7 - strlen($this->CharSet);
  // Try to select the encoding which should produce the shortest output
  if (strlen($str)/3 < $x) {
    $encoding = 'B';
    $encoded = base64_encode($str);
    $maxlen -= $maxlen % 4;
    $encoded = trim(chunk_split($encoded, $maxlen, "\n"));
  } else {
    $encoding = 'Q';
    $encoded = $this->EncodeQ($str, $position);
    $encoded = $this->WrapText($encoded, $maxlen, true);
    $encoded = str_replace("=".$this->LE, "\n", trim($encoded));
  }

  $encoded = preg_replace('/^(.*)$/m', " =?".$this->CharSet."?$encoding?\\1?=", $encoded);
  $encoded = trim(str_replace("\n", $this->LE, $encoded));

  return $encoded;
}