Hi,

I have a very wierd problem with sessions (I suspect trans-sid is 
involved). 

I try to open a file and read its contents into a variable to do som 
string magic on it before passing it to the client, but whenever I output 
the contents of the variable it turns up completely garbled in the 
browser.
The funny thing is that if I save the contents of the variable to a file 
instead of sending it to the client, then the saved file is OK. 
This only happens when I'm using sessions (both the build in ones and my 
own session handling functions), if I don't call session_start() then 
output is fine.

How the file is garbled is very different from one file to another, and 
if I just change a few lines, then completely new areas are messed up.
Below is a small program that shows the bug, and a dump of one file that 
is messed up by this procedure - that should make it possible for you to 
reproduce.


I have the following code:

<?php
session_start();
$filename = "test.txt";
$f = fopen($filename, "r");
$contents = fread($f, filesize($filename));
echo $contents;
?>


The file "test.txt" contains the following:

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="111px" height="141px">
        <tr>
                <td width="29" height="20"><img src="../images/menu_01.gif"></td>
                
      <td colspan="2" background="../images/menu_02.gif" width="82" height="20" valign="bottom"><a href="#">Login</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
                <td width="29" height="16"><img src="../images/menu_03.gif"></td>
                
      <td colspan="2" background="../images/menu_04.gif" width="82" height="16" valign="bottom"><a href="#">Logout</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
                <td width="29" height="16"><img src="../images/menu_05.gif"></td>
                
      <td colspan="2" background="../images/menu_06.gif" width="82" height="16" valign="bottom"><a href="#">PR </a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
                <td width="29" height="16"><img src="../images/menu_07.gif">
</td>
                
      <td colspan="2" background="../images/menu_08.gif" width="82" height="16" valign="bottom"><a href="#">B</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
                <td width="29" height="16"><img src="../images/menu_09.gif"></td>
                
      <td colspan="2" background="../images/menu_10.gif" width="82" height="16" valign="bottom"><a href="#">P</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
                <td width="29" height="16"><img src="../images/menu_11.gif"></td>
                <td colspan="2" background="../images/menu_12.gif" width="82" height="16" valign="bottom"><a href="#">Sp&oslash;rg</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
                <td width="29" height="16"><img src="../images/menu_13.gif"></td>
                <td colspan="2" background="../images/menu_14.gif" width="82" height="16" valign="bottom"><a href="#">&nbsp;</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
                <td width="29" height="25"><img src="../images/menu_15.gif" width="29" height="25"></td>
                <td width="61" height="25"><img src="../images/menu_16.gif" width="61" height="25"></td>
                <td width="21" height="25"><img src="../images/menu_17.gif" width="21" height="25" usemap="#lukMenu" border="0"
alt="Luk"></td>
        </tr>
</table>




When running the code as above I get the following in Lynx:


[menu_01.gif]      Login
   [menu_03.gif]      Logout
   [menu_05.gif]      PR    
   [menu_07.gif] Login   
   [menu_03.gif]      Logout
   [menu_05.gif]      PR    
   [menu_07.gif]      B  
   [menu_09.gif] t????h@???? o@????DB(????h@???? o@??"#">Logout
   [menu_05.gif]      PR 
   [menu_07.gif]      B  
   [menu_09.gif]      P
   [menu_11.gif]      PR
   [menu_07.gif]      B
   [menu_09.gif]      P
   [menu_11.gif]      Sp?rg
   [menu_13.gif]      B    
   [menu_09.gif]      P
   [menu_11.gif]      Sp?rg
   [menu_13.gif]           
   [menu_15.gif] P     
   [menu_11.gif]      Sp?rg
   [menu_13.gif]           
   [menu_15.gif]      [menu_16.gif] [menu_17.gif] Sp?rg
   [menu_13.gif]       
   [menu_15.gif]      [menu_16.gif] Luk
                                       
   ?PHPSESSID=62d8913fdddd20770795f37e35c10d4e"#">
   [menu_15.gif] [menu_16.gif] Luk



The correct output (as will be given if I remove session_start() ) is :


 [menu_01.gif] Login
   [menu_03.gif] Logout
   [menu_05.gif] PR    
   [menu_07.gif] B  
   [menu_09.gif] P
   [menu_11.gif] Sp?rg
   [menu_13.gif]      
   [menu_15.gif] [menu_16.gif] Luk


Could someone please tell me what's wrong here? 


Best regards,
Jesper Juhl
juhl@eisenstein.dk



PS. I'm running PHP 4.0.0 on Slackware Linux 7.0, Apache 1.3.12