backslashes stripped from product description?

[scatzc]

I have this weird problem in which everything I tried (including doubling doubling the backslashes) doesn't solve the problem: Zen-Cart seems to strip all backslashes from the product description.

Case in question: I am trying to include in the product description the following string:

\\myfileserver\mynetworkshare

Upon entering the product description (via Admin console) the backslashes disappear!

I tried entering

\\\\myfileserver\\mynetworkshare

but this didn't help.

I tried using enclosing this in PHP's specialhtmlchars() and that didn't help either - It seems that Zen-Cart strips those backslashes just before being stored in the database.

Any idea how to overcome this?

Thanks!

[niccol]

Have you tried using \ instead of a backslash?

[niccol]

Ha ha that doesn't work I will put spaces in between the characters

Have you tried using '& # 9 2 ;' ? Without the spaces, obviously!

[scatzc]

Have you tried using '& # 9 2 ;' ? Without the spaces, obviously!

Yes, I did - didn't help either.

Before posting here, I tried searching the subject and found only one thread - unanswered really:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80192


Is it possible that this is a bug in Zen-Cart?

[scatzc]

I forgot to ask the obvious: Am I the only one having this problem? Can you also see (or reproduce) the problem on your systems by entering a product description with one or more backslashes?

[niccol]

No, it works fine on my test server. In other words if I enter\\ I get a single \. If I enter \\\\ I get two. Which is kind of what you would expect. Don't know enough about servers to really give you advice beyond that.....

[scatzc]

No, it works fine on my test server. In other words if I enter\\ I get a single \. If I enter \\\\ I get two. Which is kind of what you would expect.

This is what I would expect, too. Thank you Nick for your answers.

This is troubling. What could have I possibly done in my system that would have introduced this problem?

Could this be a PHP version or configuration issue? Something specific not to Zen-Cart but rather to my web host?

[gjh42]

Do you have the backslashes disappearing when you first enter and save the text in your description? I know that if you edit a description after entering and saving it, special character formatting will often go away.

[scatzc]

Do you have the backslashes disappearing when you first enter and save the text in your description?

Yes. That is exactly the case.

When I first enter 4 consecutive backslashes into the product description I can still see them intact:

\\\\fileserver\\networkshare

Once I press the Preview button, every 2 backslashes turn into 1 - this is fine with me and I can understand and work with that:

\\fileserver\networkshare

But then when I press the Update button, it seems that this "divide-by-two" process repeates:

\fileservernetworkshare

Note how the single backslash after Preview disappeared but the n after it didn't (i.e. it wasn't treated like a \n = newline but rather the backslash only disappeared).

Is this a PHP feature? A bug?

[wilt]

Does this happen with the standard text box for the description, or are you using the html editor text box?