str_replace() works differently on different servers?

Lord_Yggdrasill

Well on my own server, the function str_replace($search, $replace, $subject) by default replaces only the first occurrence of the matched string. But on other servers, I've encountered issues when all occurrences of the matched substring is replaced. Consider the following example:

$queryString = "/admincp/users/edit/1";
$query = str_replace("/", "", $queryString);
echo $query;

// on my server, the output is admincp/users/edit/1
// on another user's server, the output is admincpuseredit1

This is kinda strange, I never realized this could be an issue until a few users of my script reported a glitch that prevents them from viewing any pages with longer url. Is there an explanation to the phenomenon? Or is it just my server or the other server malfunctioning? Does it have anything to do with PHP version? Please lemme know if you know the answer, thx.

bradgrafelman

The PHP manual for [man]str_replace/man spells it out:

PHP Manual wrote:
str_replace — Replace all occurrences of the search string with the replacement string

(emphasis added)

Furthermore, I don't think that aspect has changed since PHP 4 (certainly nothing newer than PHP 4.2 that I can say I've personally used, anyway).

Now, as to why your specific example is broken on your server... I can't say. And to be honest, that's very surprising/alarming to me, because that function isn't even coming from an extension - it's been in the PHP core probably since its inception. I'm not aware of any sort of ./configure options you could use to compile PHP such that it would behave this way, so... yeah, I'm at a loss.