Question

My server is running PHP 5.2.17 and I have disabled magic quotes with a php.ini file. I have an array of strings some are like

abcd “efg” hij’k lmnop’q

I am escaping them for insertion into a mysql database using the following code

foreach($array as &$data) {
    mysql_real_escape_string($data);
}

I am then constructing my sql like so

$sql='INSERT INTO table VALUES('.
     '"'.$array[0].'", '.
     '"'.$array[1].'", '.
     '"'.$array[2].'")';

I get an error when I try to execute my query. I output the $sql variable when I get an error and it seems that mysql_real_escape_string is only escaping either single quotes or double quotes.

If my $sql variable is created using single quotes with the column values in double quotes like it is above then single quotes are escaped but double quotes are not.

If I switch the quotes so that the $sql variable is created using double quotes and the column values are in single quotes only the double quotes are escaped.

Can anyone figure out what might be going wrong?

**UPDATE

Matchu figured it out. I have changed my code to the following and it works:

foreach($row as &$data) {
    $data = mysql_real_escape_string($data);
}

Answer 1

mysql_real_escape_string does not modify the string object itself, even if you use & to pass by reference instead of by value. Instead, it returns an escaped copy of the string. You can’t just run the function; you have to assign its output to a variable.

I’m not in a place where I can test right now, but Joe says this does the trick:

$data = mysql_real_escape_string($data);