OK, I don't have the problem any more but I decided to go ahead with the post anyway (since I already wrote it up). I solved the problem by turning off magic quotes in the php.ini file. I made this file for the purposes of a training course I'm writing.
At the bottom of this email I've included the source. The error is: Warning: unserialize() failed at offset 8 of 157 bytes in [blah].php on line 17 I'm running PHP 4.1.1 on win2k testing with IE5.5 and also Netscape 6.2.1 There shouldn't be an issue with setting the cookie since I can successfully display the serialised cookie (see debug line). Thanks in advance. [TK] Here comes the code. <?php $needARefresh = FALSE ; if(isset($frmAction)){ $token = array( 'name' => $frmName, 'food' => $frmFood, 'colour' => $frmColour, 'petHate' => $frmPetHate, 'joke' => $frmJoke ) ; $safeToken = serialize($token); setcookie("personalisedInfo",$safeToken); $needARefresh = TRUE ; } if(isset($_COOKIE["personalisedInfo"])){ echo $_COOKIE["personalisedInfo"] ; //debug $arrayBack = unserialize($_COOKIE["personalisedInfo"]); $name = $arrayBack['name']; $food = $arrayBack['food']; $colour = $arrayBack['colour']; $petHate = $arrayBack['petHate']; $joke = $arrayBack['joke']; } else { $name = NULL ; $food = NULL ; $colour = NULL ; $petHate = NULL ; $joke = NULL ; } ?> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <title>PHP tutorial: serialize/unserialize</title> <?php if($needARefresh) { ?> <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0;URL=<?= $PHP_SELF ?>"> <?php } ?> </head> <body> <h1>The serializer()</h1> <table> <caption>A survey</caption> <form action="<?= $PHP_SELF ?>" method="post"> <tr> <td align="right">your name:</td> <td><input type="text" name="frmName" value="<?= $name ?>"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right">favourite food:</td> <td><input type="text" name="frmFood" value="<?= $food ?>"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right">favourite colour:</td> <td><input type="text" name="frmColour" value="<?= $colour ?>"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right">pet hate:</td> <td><input type="text" name="frmPetHate" value="<?= $petHate ?>"></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right">tell me a joke:</td> <td><textarea cols="" rows="" name="frmJoke"><?= $joke ?></textarea></td> </tr> <tr> <td> </td> <td><input type="submit" name="frmAction" value="send"></td> </tr> </form> </table> </body> </html> -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php