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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T13:53:42+00:00

This a variation on my Why doesn’t update_post_meta work for certain strings? question on

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This a variation on my Why doesn’t update_post_meta work for certain strings? question on WordPress Answers. I have brought it here because I suspect this is more likely a pure PHP issue than just a WordPress one.

My question is based around the following code:

$upload = wp_handle_upload ( $_FILES [WPSM_MAIL_META_ATTACHMENT], array ('test_form' => false ) );
$path = 'C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ReSharper-6.1-License.txt';
var_dump($path);
$path = $upload['file'];
var_dump($path);
die();
update_post_meta ( 34, WPSM_MAIL_META_ATTACHMENT, $path );

The update_post_meta call updates the WPSM_MAIL_META_ATTACHMENT column in the WordPress database for post no. 34. The string literal assignment in line 2 gives $path exactly the same value as the array member assignment does in line 4, yet with the code as it is, the WPSM_MAIL_META_ATTACHMENT column is updated to an empty string. If I comment out line 4, therefore using only the literal assignment, the WPSM_MAIL_META_ATTACHMENT column is updated to the correct file path value.

I can only imagine that the two different strings assigned to $path differ in some way that is invisible to me with my very noob debugging tools var_dump and die. How can I go about diagnosing what is different between the two cases I describe above? Or, as a compromise, is there anything I can do to modify the $path = $upload['file'] assignment so that I get the same outcome as with the literal assignment?

The output in my browser window after this code executes is exactly as follows, reproduced as is, on a single line, for fidelity’s sake:

string(78) "C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ReSharper-6.1-License.txt" string(78) "C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ReSharper-6.1-License.txt"
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This is hard to trace and require some source code digging :-

    Turn out should be related to function stripslahses_deep, and apply_filter

    php > $path = 'C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ReSharper-6.1-License.txt';
php > var_dump ( stripslashes_deep($path));
string(75) "C:xampphtdocswordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ReSharper-6.1-License.txt"

    If you do this :-

    php > var_dump ( stripslashes_deep( addslashes($path) ) );
string(78) "C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ReSharper-6.1-License.txt"

    I don’t have the definite conclusion,
    likely is caused by slashes

    To start a quick debug,
    try to test value with

    /wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ReSharper-6.1-License.txt
C:/xampp/htdocs/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ReSharper-6.1-License.txt
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