[RESOLVED] escaping recognized char. 't' in date()

ATS16805

i'm not a "newbie" per se, but i found something today which might be of interest to those who frequently reference this forum category, or perhaps to those who provide help here as well.

Knowing that a certain set of Alphabetical characters, due to their PHP-inherent representation of "increments of time", must be "escaped" using a "backslash" ( Hexadecimal NCR \ ), i decided to reference The Manual for a quick refresher (as i often do on this particular subject) of the powerful yet persnickety PHP built-in function: date()

I recognized today, while re-formatting the output string of a Date i would be returning to the User, that the character \t required not one, but two back-slashes in order for its display. "Why?", i thought. "This is strange."
Then it occurred to me that perhaps it's for disambiguation of the source-code, to account for the "tab character" ( '\t' ).

Upon referencing The Manual, i noticed the following:

According to PHP Manual example A, the "t" needs only be escaped once.
According to PHP Manual Example, B it must be escaped twice.

though i did a bit of research on the subject, i was unable to come up with an answer to my question: Why is there a required single-backslash for escaping the small " T " in the PHP date(), and sometimes the requirement is a "double" backslash?

Fun-Facts for the Freque Geeky:
New to XHTML, PHP, or Character Encodings?
Interested in more about these curious "escape" issues, like those of '\t' and '\n'?
Learn more about Escape Sequences, [Numerical] Character References (NCR's), and Character Encodings at the following Recommeded Resources(1):
GNU dot org : Escape Sequences

IT and Communication: Tutorial on Character Code issues

Wikipedia: Character Encodings

size=2 - found during my research today. this is no new topic of interest to me. i trust that these are credible resources, and if nothing else, a good starting point for more research (i.e. Skip Google, and jump right in on these! they're credible sources, remarkably comprehensive, and well documented). Good Luck![/size]

NogDog

The difference is whether or not you are using a single- or double-quoted string. In a double-quoted string, \n, \r, and \t have special meanings (newline, carriage return, and tab), while in single-quoted strings they are just a backslash followed by a letter. So in a double-quoted string you must escape the backslash itself if you want to represent a backslash followed by one of those special characters.

bradgrafelman

Since we're throwing around copious amounts of manual links, here's one that talks about double quoted strings and the special "escape sequences" that are inherit to this type of string (as opposed to a single quoted string).

ATS16805

bradgrafelman wrote:
here's ... double quoted strings and the special "escape sequences"

cool. thanks! that just about sums it up!
🙂

in retrospect, it would probably explain a lot of other issues i've encountered, and dismissed, or "worked around" for lack of certainty.

bradgrafelman

Don't forget to mark this thread resolved.

ATS16805

bradgrafelman wrote:
Don't forget to mark this thread resolved.

something i did won't let javascript work on seamonkey. sorry bout that. i forgot to come back and fix it. is there a non-javascript way to "resolve" a thread? just curious. i realize most people (including myself) typically have it on, but this is the second time i've found myself unable to mark it for that reason. w/out javascript, it's a link that goes to the "bottom" of the thread, and there are other "tools" there, just not the Resolve Thread tool.