Should I use .htaccess to set up php for some important directives anyway?

[searain]

register_globals
magic_quotes_gpc
magic_quotes_runtime
magic_quotes_sybase

For the set up of above directives. For the shared hosting on a server that I cannot control, will it be a good idea to use the .htaccess to set them up for the site no matter what the server set up is? Even the server set up is the same as my site set up?

My reasons are if the server change their set up of these directives, it will cause the site troubles. Worse, it may insert wrong data (such as with extra ') into the database while the site run in the changed server set up.

The hosting company may inform the merchant that the set up changes, but the merchant may not be tech oriented to understand the changes and doesn't inform the IT to change it or the merchant may not have the money to do so at that moment.

I have seen some sites that the contents displayed with extra ', I think that is caused by the server set up changes but the site not change with it.

Thanks!

[MarkR]

You could try to do so, but there's no guarantee that the server will honour them.

Therefore, you should probably also check that these are set to acceptable values in your PHP code and have it fail if they're not. Better to have a broken page than broken data.

Mark