Function call has inserted characters

[LyeGreen]

Hi,

Just reinstalled Windows XP on my laptop, I then loaded Apache & PHP.
I am now trying to run scripts that work on other machines.
The problem I have is extra characters being inserted.

For example, I have a menu of several lines like this:

<td width='100%' align='center' height='35' class='Ptr' onclick="Jump('Local')">

(The class just changes the mouse pointer)

The function is simply:

<script LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
function Jump(Page) {
alert(Page);
parent.main.location = "Main.php?Page=" + Page;
}
</script>

The alert displays: L*o*c*a*l
where the * (above) is a square.

Instead or "Local", the receiving PHP gets:
?Page=L%26%2365533;o%26%2365533;c%26%2365533;a%26%2365533;l

Needless to say, it fails...

Another symptom is that I read a file of tab delimited words, which I split
with the command:
$v = explode("\t", $ln);

I now have to "trim" the variable $v[0], but it worked before..

If anyone has an idea of what I have screwed up, I would greatly appreciate your help.

Thanks.

[Kor]

I suppose you should encode / decode the URI components, both on client and, probably, on server-side:

http://xkr.us/articles/javascript/encode-compare/

[LyeGreen]

I agree, and I do (encode) when I don't have control over the characters being sent.

I thought this could have been a language or code-page problem, but unfortunately I didn't have a clue as to where to start looking.

My problem appeared to be JavaScript inserting characters. Or at least, that's what I thought until I realised that it was the browsers execution of a call that was inserting the characters.

I reinstalled Google Chrome (no luck), but then tried IE, which did NOT insert the characters, but still did not fully work.

So I then updated the script that it calls, and found that the text file that I was reading had been saved in UNICODE! (The source being an Excel spread sheet).

I saved the text again as plain text, and it now all works.

So, thanks to everyone that puzzled over this and sorry for reporting a user error..

[Kor]

OK. We supposed already that you are using UTF-8 formatted file, we didn't think that you were not.

[LyeGreen]

No, neither did I...

I'm afraid it's a case of changing too many things at once.

As I said, I had reinstalled XP a couple days earlier and wanted to test my web site locally, so I then installed Apache & PHP.

Unfortunately, I then updated my Excel file and clicked Save As...
But instead of selecting "Text (Tab delimited)" my mouse caught the "Unicode text" item that follows.

Needless to say, my initial thoughts were that it was the complex Apache & PHP install that I had screwed up,

If I had been using IE, the problem would have been fixed a lot earlier as that worked up to the subsequent page. It then became glaringly obvious what was wrong.

What fooled me was that Chrome had read the unicode file and gave me what appeared to be plain text!
It was the change of my constant into unicode that confused me.

I have now written an Excel Macro to save the file, so at least I can't do that again.

Once again, my apologies for wasting your time.

Please close this item, as I don't appear to have the authority (as a new user).