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Bug #18776 using & instead of "&" causes malformed HTTP_REFERER
Submitted: 2002-08-07 06:11 UTC Modified: 2002-08-07 06:18 UTC
From: rob at pipgroup dot com Assigned:
Status: Not a bug Package: Variables related
PHP Version: 4.2.2 OS: Win2K
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
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From: rob at pipgroup dot com
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 [2002-08-07 06:11 UTC] rob at pipgroup dot com 
when using "&" instead of "&" to separate variables passed through a url causes HTTP_REFERER to include all the url after the first &.

According to the W3C & should be used to avoid confusion with & being used as a character entity identifier.

This is a big problem when passing variables out of a page for processing on a second page which then uses a header() redirect back to the original page.

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 [2002-08-07 06:18 UTC] markonen@php.net 
Actually I think that W3C recommends either & or just a semicolon as the parameter separator.

You are encountering a user agent issue. PHP doesn't parse the Referer header; it's there exactly like the user agent sent it.

User agents generally know that a "&" in a href attribute be decoded and a plain "&" sent to the server when accessing the location. It seems that your browser doesn't do this for &.
 
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