Special characters in file names and directories

Question

I'm building a site that lets users create directories to
which they give the name they want.
Using PHP, is there one universal solution to avoid any
special characters in directories, yet will
display the directory/file names in html the way the user
intended?
example of a possible name:
"ça alors: it's a déjà-vu"
How can I encode this so it's valid as a directory name, yet
can be displayed as intended when the
name is output to the page. urlencode() does not do the job,
neither does htmlentities()...
seb ( [email protected])
http://webtrans1.com | high-end web
design
Downloads: Slide Show, Directory Browser, Mailing List

Answer 1

(_seb_) wrote:
> Gary White wrote:
>> On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:15:04 +0100, "(_seb_)"
<[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> "ça alors: it's a déjà-vu"
>>>
>>> How can I encode this so it's valid as a
directory name, yet can be
>>> displayed as intended when the name is output to
the page.
>>> urlencode() does not do the job, neither does
htmlentities()...
>>
>>
>> What's wrong with:
>>
>> $l="ça alors: it's a déjà-vu";
>> print urlencode($l)."<br>\n";
>> print htmlspecialchars($l);
>>
>> Gary
>
>
> I know that, but what is the name of the directory? It
has to be a real
> directory name, not a string stored somewhere.
>
> What's a valid encoding for a directory named "ça
alors: it's a
> déjà-vu"? I can call a folder like this on my
Mac, but it won't work on
> any server...
>
>
>
PS: basically it's not a url encoding issue.
I can url encode "ça alors: it's a déjà-vu",
and pass it in a url query string. But my issue is not
with an url query string, it's with an actual URL, that is,
the actual name of the directory. It
can't be "ça alors: it's a déjà-vu". But I
want to allow the user to name their directory like that
if they want. So I need a way to encode this into characters
that can be used for an actual
directory on the server.
seb ( [email protected])
http://webtrans1.com | high-end web
design
Downloads: Slide Show, Directory Browser, Mailing List