<?php
  /*
    Oracle 9.0.1i
    database internal encoding WE8DEC
    database client encoding specified by NLS_LANG parameter
    is GERMAN_AUSTRIA.UTF8, so Oracle automatically converts
    characters to client encoding.
    
    CREATE TABLE TEST (
      NAME CHAR(10)
    );
    insert into test values ('?');
    insert into test values ('??');
    
    NOTE: this error doesn't occur when we use
    column type VARCHAR2 insted of CHAR
   */
    ociinternaldebug(true);
    $connection = OCILogon(DB_USER, DB_PASS, DB_NAME);
    $query = "SELECT * FROM TEST";
    $statement = OCIParse ($connection, $query);
    OCIExecute($statement);
    
    while (OCIFetchInto ($statement, $row, OCI_ASSOC+OCI_RETURN_NULLS)) {
        var_dump($row);
    }
  
?>

result of ociinternaldebug.

OCIDebug: oci_do_connect: id=3
OCIDebug: oci_parse "SELECT * FROM TEST" id=4 conn=3
array(1) { ["NAME"]=> string(11) "u " } OCIDebug: _oci_make_zval: NAME,retlen = 11,retlen4 = 0,storage_size4 =
11,indicator 10, retcode = 1406
array(1) { ["NAME"]=> bool(false) } OCIDebug: START php_rshutdown_oci
OCIDebug: END php_rshutdown_oci
OCIDebug: START _oci_stmt_list_dtor: id=4 last_query="SELECT * FROM TEST"
OCIDebug: START _oci_column_hash_dtor: NAME
OCIDebug: END _oci_column_hash_dtor: NAME
OCIDebug: START _oci_conn_list_dtor: id=3
OCIDebug: nothing to do..
OCIDebug: END _oci_conn_list_dtor: id=3
OCIDebug: END _oci_stmt_list_dtor: id=4

P.S.: Feedback was sent on Thu, 5 Feb 2004 15:25:01 (+0200) to mr. Anatoly Dovgal, but there was no response from him.

Please try using this CVS snapshot:

  http://snaps.php.net/php4-STABLE-latest.tar.gz
 
For Windows:
 
  http://snaps.php.net/win32/php4-win32-STABLE-latest.zip

No feedback was provided for this bug for over a week, so it is
being suspended automatically. If you are able to provide the
information that was originally requested, please do so and change
the status of the bug back to "Open".

We have this problem on multiple configurations, everywhere situation is the same.
Case1:
DB Server Compaq Tru64Unix + Oracle 10.1.0.3.0
Client machines: 
A. SuSE 7.3 + Oracle Client 9.0.1
B. SLES 9 + Oracle Instant Client 10

Case2:
DB Server SuSE 8.1 + Oracle 9.0.1
Oracle Client 9.0.1 running on the same machine.

We have tried PHP 4.3.10 and 4.3.11, and this doesn't change the situation, problem persists.

In SQLPlus I see data correctly saved from a web application, but when using OCIFetchInto in PHP script I receive FALSE instead of column value when column contains more than one umlaut character.

Some details: 
NLS_LANG = GERMAN_AUSTRIA.UTF8;
Database encoding is WE8DEC.

One more investigation:
If I simply convert column from char to varchar2 using ALTER TABLE statement, it doesn't help. OCIFetchInto behaves correctly only if table was created with varchar2 type. But even with varchar2 column, if I fill entire column with umlauts, OCIFetchInto and OCIFetch fail. 

Sample:
SQL> desc test;
 Name                                      Null?    Typ
 ----------------------------------------- -------- ----------------------------
 NAME                                               VARCHAR2(10)

SQL> select name, length(name) from test order by name;

NAME                           LENGTH(NAME)
------------------------------ ------------
?                                         1
??                                        2
?????                                     5
??????                                    6
??????????                               10

--So you see that Oracle shows length correctly.
Now I use the following php script:

    ociinternaldebug(true);
    $connection = OCILogon("????", "????", "????");
    $query = "SELECT * FROM TEST order by name";
    $statement = OCIParse ($connection, $query);
    OCIExecute($statement);

    while (OCIFetchInto ($statement, $row, OCI_ASSOC+OCI_RETURN_NULLS)) {
        var_dump($row);
    }

    OCIExecute($statement);

    while(OCIFetch($statement)) {
       var_dump (OCIResult($statement, "NAME"));
    }


And here's result of ociinternaldebug:

OCIDebug: _oci_open_server new conn=0 dname=????<br />
OCIDebug: _oci_open_session new sess=5 user=????<br />
OCIDebug: oci_do_connect: id=6<br />
OCIDebug: oci_parse "SELECT * FROM TEST order by name" id=7 conn=6<br />
array(1) {
  ["NAME"]=>
  string(2) "?"
}
array(1) {
  ["NAME"]=>
  string(4) "??"
}
array(1) {
  ["NAME"]=>
  string(10) "?????"
}
OCIDebug: _oci_make_zval:             NAME,retlen =   10,retlen4 = 0,storage_size4 =   11,indicator    6, retcode = 1406<br />
array(1) {
  ["NAME"]=>
  bool(false)
}
OCIDebug: _oci_make_zval:             NAME,retlen =   10,retlen4 = 0,storage_size4 =   11,indicator   10, retcode = 1406<br />
array(1) {
  ["NAME"]=>
  bool(false)
}
string(2) "?"
string(4) "??"
string(10) "?????"
OCIDebug: _oci_make_zval:             NAME,retlen =   10,retlen4 = 0,storage_size4 =   11,indicator    6, retcode = 1406<br />
bool(false)
OCIDebug: _oci_make_zval:             NAME,retlen =   10,retlen4 = 0,storage_size4 =   11,indicator   10, retcode = 1406<br />
bool(false)
OCIDebug: START php_rshutdown_oci<br />
OCIDebug: END   php_rshutdown_oci<br />
OCIDebug: START _oci_stmt_list_dtor: id=7 last_query="SELECT * FROM TEST order by name"<br />
OCIDebug: START _oci_column_hash_dtor: NAME<br />
OCIDebug: END   _oci_column_hash_dtor: NAME<br />
OCIDebug: START _oci_conn_list_dtor: id=6<br />
OCIDebug: nothing to do..<br />
OCIDebug: END   _oci_conn_list_dtor: id=6<br />
OCIDebug: END   _oci_stmt_list_dtor: id=7<br />
OCIDebug: START _oci_close_session: logging-off sess=5<br />
OCIDebug: START _oci_close_server: detaching conn=4 dbname=????<br />
OCIDebug: START php_mshutdown_oci<br />
OCIDebug: END   php_mshutdown_oci<br />

-------------
Some thoughts on this error:
Combination of OCIFetch+OCIResult has the same problem.
The error occurs when length of column value in bytes exceeds length of column defined in oracle + 1 byte. Length of column value differs from length of field for multi-byte encodings like UTF8, so probably there's an error with memory allocation (it's just a guess).

And P.S.: By the way, when I change environment variable NLS_LANG to GERMAN_AUSTRIA.WE8DEC, everything's selected fine!

I have digged deeper into this problem and it seems that I have found a solution, or at least a workaround for this problem. The reason for the problem is that Oracle driver raises error 1406 ("fetched column value was truncated") while the value is not really truncated, and this situation is handled incorrectly by oci8 module (what I don't understand is why SQLPlus, which uses same libs, doesn't raise this error...). However, this solution requires changes in PHP source code (oci8.c module), so this must be done by one of PHP developers.

So the solution looks this way:
In "ext/oci8/oci8.c" module there's a function "_oci_make_zval". In this function there's following piece of code:
------------------------
        switch (column->retcode) {
        case 0:
            /* intact value */
            if (column->piecewise) {
                size = column->retlen4;
            } else {
                size = column->retlen;
            }
            break;

        default:
            /* XXX we SHOULD maybe have a different behaviour for unknown results! */
            ZVAL_FALSE(value);
            return 0;
        }
------------------------
As far as I understand, here we set size of return string in case execution completed successfully or return FALSE in other cases (like in this case of this bug). However, in case of error 1406 we have normal return, but it's set to false because retcode is not 0. If we modify this piece of code this way:
------------------------
        switch (column->retcode) {
        case 1406:
            /*Protection from invalid behaviour*/
            size = column->retlen;
        case 0:
            /* intact value */
            if (column->piecewise) {
                size = column->retlen4;
            } else {
                size = column->retlen;
            }
            break;

        default:
            /* XXX we SHOULD maybe have a different behaviour for unknown results! */
            ZVAL_FALSE(value);
            return 0;
        }
------------------------
everying start to work fine.

It's a DIRTY solution, although it closes the bug, but it would be nice to investigate the source of this error -- why error 1406 is raised here. If this is a bug in Oracle, than this approach can be a workaround for this bug.

Thanks for bugging me about it, but it will be fixed very soon. 

The bug has been fixed in OCI8 v.1.1, which is available in CVS HEAD and PECL (use `pear install oci8-beta` to install it).