note 97990 deleted from function.htmlspecialchars by danbrown

Note Submitter: Anonymous 

----

Updated my form data parser. I found it easier to use a regular expression to check and see if any previously encoded data exists, then decode it repeatedly until there is none left, then re-encode it.

<?php
function formspecialchars($var)
	{
		$pattern = '/&(#)?[a-zA-Z0-9]{0,};/';
		
		if (is_array($var)) {    // If variable is an array
			$out = array();      // Set output as an array
			foreach ($var as $key => $v) {      
				$out[$key] = formspecialchars($v); 		// Run formspecialchars on every element of the array and return the result. Also maintains the keys.
			}
		} else {
			$out = $var;
			while (preg_match($pattern,$out) > 0) {
				$out = htmlspecialchars_decode($out,ENT_QUOTES);   	
			}		 					
			$out = htmlspecialchars(stripslashes(trim($out)), ENT_QUOTES,'UTF-8',true); 	// Trim the variable, strip all slashes, and encode it
			
		}
		
		return $out;
	}
?>