issue with ! appearing in email

[Paul_Ferrie]

Hi guys,

I've been having a bit of an issue with php today and it has me totally stumped.

Hopefully someone on here can point out my mistake.

I have a function for sending an email with attachments. This works bar one small issue.
! is appearing in the email body and is screwing up part of the formatting

Below is the code:

function xmail($to, $subject, $text, $ref) { 
		/* */
	$filepath = "../../images/uploads/".$ref."/";
	$vmLink ="";
	$vwLink ="";
	if ($handle = opendir($filepath)) {
		while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
			if ($file != "." && $file != "..") {
				$extArr = explode(".", $file);
				$extStr = $extArr[1];
				if($extStr !="mov" &&  $extStr !="wmv"){
					$files[] = $filepath.$file;
				}else{
					$fileType = substr($file,15,4);
					if($fileType == "_vm_"){
						$link1 = "http://www.domain.com/images/uploads/".$ref."/".$file;
						$vmLink = "Movie link download: <a href='$link1'>$file</a>  Right click Save Target as... <br />";
					}
					if($fileType == "_vw_"){
						$link2 = "http://www.domain.com/images/uploads/".$ref."/".$file;
						$vwLink = "Wire-res link download: <a href='$link2'>$file</a>  Right click Save Target as... <br />";
					}
				}
			}
		}	
		$text.="<br />".$vmLink.$vwLink;
		closedir($handle);
	}
		/* */
	$b = 0; 
	$fEmail = "[e-mail]";

$mail_attached = ""; 
$boundary = md5(uniqid(time(),1))."_xmail"; 
$add_header = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"$boundary\""; 
if (count($files)>0) { 
	for ($a=0;$a<count($files);$a++) { 
		if ($fp = fopen($files[$a],"rb")) {
			$file_name = basename($files[$a]); 
			$content[$b] = fread($fp,filesize($files[$a])); 
			$mail_attached .= "--".$boundary."\r\n" 
			   ."Content-Type: image/jpeg; name=\"$file_name\"\r\n" 
			   . "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n" 
			   . "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$file_name\"\r\n\r\n" 
			   .chunk_split(base64_encode($content[$b]))."\r\n"; 	   
			   $b++; 
			   fclose($fp); 
		} else { 
			echo "none"; 
		} 
	} 
	$mail_attached .= "--".$boundary." \r\n"; 
   	$mail_content = "--".$boundary."\r\n" 
              . "Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed\r\n" 
              . "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\r\n\r\n" 
              . $text."\r\n\r\n".$mail_attached; 
   	$ok = mail($to,$subject,$mail_content,"$add_header\r\n"."FROM:".$fEmail,"-fwebmaster@{$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']}");
	return true;
}else { 
	$sheaders 	 = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n"; 
	$sheaders 	.= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
	$sheaders 	.= "From: $fEmail\r\n";
	$ok = mail($to,$subject,$text,$sheaders,"-fwebmaster@{$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME']}"); 
	return true;
} 
} 

This is not all my code. More a miss-mash of years of editing.
Any takers?

Attached is a screen grab of the email that comes through with the issue.

[bradgrafelman]

This has nothing to do with the PHP code - the '! ' isn't in the actual e-mail itself (more than likely). I believe it has to do with either your e-mail client or some anti-spam/parent-control type of software on your computer.

I've seen the same issue where random words would sometime have a '! ' sequence inserted in them when receiving e-mails from a friend of mine. Even my own replies would sometimes have been "filtered" with that character sequence.

[Paul_Ferrie]

It's a new one for me.
I've used this script for many years and never came across this issue.
I wouldn't have bothered that much but initial test's with varied file names sometime screws up the link.

[Paul_Ferrie]

I've setup the script to send to 2 other email accounts. One msn and one on a mobile device. Still seeing this ! appearing in the email.

[bradgrafelman]

Who are you using as an SMTP host? Your local ISP, a shared host, ... ?

[Paul_Ferrie]

As far as I am aware it is a dedicated Linux box.