Help with < and > characters in string variables

[maven12]

Hi

I am trying to build up a string with several XML tags but as soon as I hit the first angle bracket (i.e. <), PHP seems to ignore it completely and does not include it - or anything else within angle brackets (tags) thereafter into the string.

An example would be:

<?php

$xmlstr = "<message><messagetext> hello </messagetext></message>";

?>

This will return a string "hello" but nothing else.

I'm guessing there is a really simple explanation but I've googled for ages now and can't find it. I've also tried single quotes instead of double quotes with no difference.

Any assistance is appreciated.
Thanks
Maven12

[_uk_stuff]

If you are trying to echo this string out in your browser, it will interpret the tags as html but not do anything. This would therefore only give you the text 'hello' as you state.

If this is the case, right clicking the webpage and selecting 'View Source' it would give you the full tags.

If you wanted to display it you could echo the string once it has been passed through htmlspecialchars which would swap all the characters out for the html equivalent.

here is the manual link: http://uk.php.net/htmlspecialchars

Cheers

Stuff

[NogDog]

Depending on what you are doing, or just for testing purposes, you could output the script results as plain text via the applicable header:

<?php
header('Content-Type: text/plain');
// rest of script . . .
?>

[maven12]

Hi to both [UK] STuff and NogDog

Many thanks for the replies, both of which helped a lot and I'm happy to report a working program now!

Thanks again
Maven12