[RESOLVED] Two Variables, same content but not same lenghts ???

[Slarti]

Hi folks,

I have a script which checks if the provided email is a valid domain. Strangely it works with simple domains like simpledomain.com but not with a dash inside like da-domain.com. Checking further and doing var_dumps on them I saw that the email/domain length is not the reality:

I have set up a Variable1 manually (da-domain.com) and Variable2 is send over from a form to a function. (naturally the da-domain is fictive and used only to demonstrate the dilemma)

Email: [e-mail]
string(20) "[e-mail]" *already too long
Type: string
Variable1: da-domain.com A is valid
Variable1: da-domain.com MX is valid
Variable2: da-domain.com A is not valid
Variable2: da-domain.com MX is not valid
Var dumps:
Domain1: string(13) "da-domain.com"
Domain2: string(16) "da-domain.com"

The hard coded Variable 1 pass and has 13 chars - the transmitted Variable 2 has 16.

Any idea how come and how can I eliminate this would be really appreciated.
Thank you

Slarti

[bradgrafelman]

Er, wait... it really says exactly this:

string(20) "[e-mail]"

? That's.. rather odd, since PHP will print spaces even for null bytes when you do a var_dump().

Try adding something like this and let us know what the output is:

for($i = 0; $i < strlen($test); $i++)
  printf("&#37;x ", ord($test[$i]));

where $test is the variable holding the string that's apparently too long. That code should output each byte of the string in hexadecimal format.

[Slarti]

I ran now actually the content [e-mail] and this is the output.

string(20) "[e-mail]" 66 6f 6f 40 64 61 26 23 34 35 64 6f 6d 61 69 6e 2e 63 6f 6d string Email lenght: 20

So looking at it I see following thing

26 23 34 35

while 2d is a normal dash

26 equals &
23 equals #
34 equals 4
35 equals 5

so - which equals in HTML a dash.

so here is the answer to my question, the variable has the dash as a html code, which comes from a former sanitizing effort. As I check deeply the email I don't need the actual sanitizing.

So thanks a lot for providing me the hint how I can troubleshoot.
This is much appreciated.

Cheers
Slarti

[bradgrafelman]

Slarti;10951274 wrote:

so - which equals in HTML a dash.

When you're debugging an issue in PHP and you want to examine the contents of certain variables, never trust what you "see" in your browser - what you're seeing is the result of your browser parsing whatever debugging info you added to your PHP script as if it were HTML code. Always view the source of the page so you can see the raw output from PHP and base your debugging efforts on that data.

[Slarti]

Yup, haven't thought about it - quite noobish of me 😉

thanks for reminding me.

[Weedpacket]

Slarti wrote:

naturally the da-domain is fictive and used only to demonstrate the dilemma

FYI, the "example.com" domain exists precisely for this purpose (see http://www.example.com/ for details). There really is a "dadomain" domain out there.