Question

I am trying to read the data with $_POST which has been sent through a form. the form sends the data in octal format. this is part of the form:

<input type="hidden" name="chap-challenge" value="\314\130\024\000\350\025"

the problem is that,

echo $_POST['chap-challenge'];

would give me the literal string:

\314\135\024\000\354\025

which is not the same as

echo "\314\135\024\000\354\025";

how can i somehow convert that string to a double-quoted one so that it could understand they are octal values?

Answer 1

You can evaluate it as php expression, but it lacks in security – example.

<?php
echo "\100\101\102\103\104\n";

$c = '\100\101\102\103\104';
eval( '$c2="'.$c.'";' );

echo $c,"\n";
echo $c2;

Edit:

Also you can parse it for your own – example:

<?
echo "\100\101\102\103\104\n";

$c = '\100\101\102\103\104';
$c2 = explode('\\',$c);
$c3 = array();
$c4 = array();
foreach($c2 as $cc) {
   $c3[] = octdec($cc);
   $c4[] = chr(octdec($cc));
}
$c4 = implode('',$c4);

echo $c,"\n";
var_dump($c3);
var_dump($c4);

Edit:

To remove first item from array use: array_shift function.