Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not
a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at
http://www.php.net/manual/ and the instructions on how to report
a bug at http://bugs.php.net/how-to-report.php

mssql extension no longer automatically trims varchar fields

This is a bug, as there is no space in the database. The change from not auto-trimming is a good one IMO, but the behaviour of empty fields is different now.

Any character field which is empty (e.g. '') and not null will be returned as a space.

My application no longer worked correctly after the 4.3.4 change and I have to now manually do (if ($field==' ') $field='';). This is a major change from previous versions and a bug as the mssql functions should return what is IN the database. Maybe this is the reason why the rtrim was done in the past?

Please re-evaluate.

also, instead of returning 0 it is now also returning a space if there is a 0 in the DB

THIS IS A BUG new to 4.3.4.

Introduced by removing the auto-trimming

While the change is a good one, if '' is in the DB, mssql_fetch_* should NOT return ' '

IN DB: '' (empty string)
Returned by mssql_fetch_assoc(): ' ' (single space)

I too have encountered this bug with windows 2003 server using version 4.3.4 of php.

Where as previously my empty varchar fields where returned as '' they are now returned as ' ' which has caused several of my applications to fail.

THIS most DEFINITELY is a BUG! I have built a VERY LARGE DB driven PHP site. In many places, I check to see if the DB field was empty or not. Before, Fetch always returned an empty string or a NULL, it doesn't matter which because it evaluated to a FALSE, and now it returns a space character which evaluates to TRUE! This is quite nasty. I'm going to add this ME TOO comment because it hasn't been fixed yet, and it really needs to be...PLEASE!

I think that is a Bug, too.
I have the same Problem.
It's not a solution to trim any value. Or??

@iliaa:
Please write why do you think it's not a Bug.


Thanks!
Francois

The Protocol have been changed.
Quote from Sybase Doco.

[quote]
The empty string ("") is treated as a single space. In *char* and
*nchar* *not null* columns, the result is a (column-length) field of
spaces.
[/quote]

Found on Bug Report:
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=6527


Its not nice...
Just I write my own empty-Function.....


Francois

In my opinion this is bug, and is still present on version 4.3.6. This is not only problem with CHAR, and NCHAR columns but also empty VARCHAR columns returns space.

Example:
$re = mssql_fetch_row(mssql_query("SELECT CAST('' AS VARCHAR(10))"));
print('--'.$re[0].'--');
// the result is: -- --
// and should be: ----

Because of that I still use PHP4.3.3.

If you must make from a space to '' in your PHP script, how can you distinguish between a "true" space or "faked" space?
All '' and space in the DB are then '' (:-((()

hmm this is a bug
i developed a cms first for mysql and the port for postgre with select database-type works very fine

the last two days i try to get it running with mssql/msde an nothing works with this damned spaces

if (!empty($image)) echo "<img src=\"" . $image . "\" />"; for example makes a big shit :-(

'' = ' '. Politely, this is a bug. In transact sql and query analyzer '' is seen as '' but in php '' is seen as ' '. I am using varchar fields. This surely breaks several lines of code for the empty function is now useless when selecting '' out of the database. Please reconsider and look into this item. 

Add autotrim to the ini file if this would fix the problem.

More than 3 years later (version 4.4.6 tested today) the bug seems to be still present.
Please, if you don't wan't to consider this issue as a bug, would it be possible to add a "mssql.trimemptystringspace" option to the mssql module in order to let developpers choose to activate or not this feature via init_set() or the php.ini file ?
It would be more efficient than triming all returned row in the PHP code.
Thanks in advance.
Clement

The bug is in the Microsoft library not in the PHP extension.

Use the php_dblib.dll version of the extension. It does not have the 
problem, though it will require that you update to version 5 of PHP.