ID: 40395
User updated by: jfrim at idirect dot com
Reported By: jfrim at idirect dot com
Status: Assigned
Bug Type: PCRE related
Operating System: *
PHP Version: *
Assigned To: andrei
New Comment:
Another reason why it would be best to return NULL and DOUBLE-QUOTE
(0x00 and 0x22 respectively) in regular expression back-references
WITHOUT being escaped:
If this bug was fixed by escaping the backslash as well...
...The the context of the resulting output string would be a mix of
escaped and non-escaped data. (Since the input string is non-escaped,
but back-references are escaped.) This would make it impossible to
safely un-escape without risk of data corruption. The only way to
handle this would be to use the "e" modifier in the regular expression
and embed stripslashes() into the replacement string. That's extra
processing overhead, and basically makes the entire preg_replace()
function useless without the "e" modifier. It also defeats any
possible purposes as to why the back-references are escaped in the
first place. Boo to this solution!
Alternatively, if this bug was fixed by returning NULL and DOUBLE-QUOTE
without being escaped...
When using preg_replace, the resulting string will always be in a
non-encoded context. If a slash-encoded string is ever desired, the
entire thing can be wrapped in addslashes() by the user, without ever
risking destroying the integrity of the data.
Previous Comments:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2007-02-08 19:59:04] jfrim at idirect dot com
The following code demonstrates 0x00 and 0x22 being escaped, without
0x5C being escaped.
It creates an 8-bit ASCII text output, with the character value (in
DECIMAL) enclosed within braces (except for escaped chars, in which
case it ends up as "92"), followed by the actual character, then a
CRLF, for all 256 characters.
Note how the backslash (0x5C, decimal 92) is NOT escaped, and contrary
to what [EMAIL PROTECTED] posted, the single-quote (0x27, decimal 39) is
NOT escaped either. (The double-quote (0x22, decimal 34) is escaped
instead.)
<?php
header('Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII');
header('Content-Disposition: inline; filename=PCRE.txt');
header('Pragma: no-cache');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: no-cache; must-revalidate');
$teststring='';
for ($i=0; $i<=255; $i++) {
$teststring.=chr($i);
}
echo
preg_replace('/([\\x00-\\xFF])/e',"'{'.ord('\\1').'}\\1'.chr(13).chr(10)",$teststring);
?>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2007-02-08 19:47:10] jfrim at idirect dot com
I have verifed that along with 0x00 being escaped, 0x22 (the
double-quote character) is also escaped. No other byte values are
affected.
Even if the documentation was changed to reflect this escaped behaviour
of 0x00 and 0x22, there would still be a bug with this behaviour since
0x5C (the backslash character) is NOT escaped!
This would create a discrepency problem if the input string to a
preg_replace() contained a literal backslash followed by a number zero,
or a backslash followed by a double-quote. There would be no way to
tell from the resulting preg_replace'd data if those sequences are
escaped NULLs and escaped double-quotes, or if those were literal
sequences in the input string.
So the only way to fix this bug is to either...
...A: Escape the backslash as well, and change the documentation to
state that 0x00, 0x22, and 0x5C are escaped, or...
...B: Do not escape any characters.
I would say method B is preferred, since no stripslashes() would have
to be performed on the resulting output from a preg_replace(), and it's
far more intuitive to always know that a regular expression
back-reference will always contain the exact byte value that was
matched, without having to worry about special exceptions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2007-02-08 13:17:59] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ok, so the problem here is that preg_do_eval() calls
php_addslashes_ex(), that escapes "'", "\" and "\0".
So we should either not escape the \0 or reflect the behaviour in the
docs.
Assigning to the extension maintainer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2007-02-08 06:01:32] jfrim at idirect dot com
I'd also like to present bug #16590:
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=16590
Note the following example they list as a SOLUTION to specifying NULLs
in the pattern:
preg_match("/\\x00/", "foo\0bar")
And note the following statement from bug report #16590:
"...The docs state that PCRE is binary safe..."
So if PCRE is binary safe, and you can specify NULLs in the pattern
with \x00, why are back references unable to return these matched
NULLs?!?!?
How is this NOT a bug?!??
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2007-02-08 05:32:20] jfrim at idirect dot com
If the regular expression were /([\x00-\xFF])/ , you would think EVERY
possible byte value would be matched. In fact, all of them do get
matched. However, all of them EXCEPT for byte value 0x00 is returned
in the \1 back reference. Any 0x00 bytes are returned as two bytes,
0x5C followed by 0x30.
I have not found in any Perl regular expression documentation an
explanation for why the 0x00 byte is handled like this, so could you
please tell me why this is NOT a bug with PCRE.
Thanks.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at
http://bugs.php.net/40395
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