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Losing random characters in HTML email

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,hj

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Nov 28, 2003, 2:21:39 PM11/28/03
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From: ",hj" <webm...@mail.com>
Subject: Losing random characters in HTML email
Date: 28 November 2003 17:21

I've narrowed down my code as much as I can so that I can show you this bug.
The reason the a's are there and not removed is because if I remove them the
problem doesn't show itself. It seems that there is a pattern and the nth
character does not show. Weird stuff.


<?php
$content = '

<html>
<head>
<title>aaaaaaa :: title</title>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1">
<META name="Description" content="aaaaaar -
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaae.">
<META name="Keywords"
content="aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaae">
<LINK rel="stylesheet"
href="aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" type="text/css">
</head>
<body>
contentdfdfdf
</body>
</html>';
$header = "Return-Path: fai...@aaaaaaa.com\r\n";
$header .= "From: Gamblar <acco...@aaaaaaa.com>\r\n";
$header .= "Content-Type: text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1;\r\n\r\n";

mail("webm...@aaaaaaaaaaa.com","acco...@aaaaaaa.com",$content,$header);
?>

Try that code, changing the first mail attribute to your email address. You
should get this output: "contentdfdfdf </html".

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Bug, perhaps?

Thanks in advance,

Keiron


Pedro Graca

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Nov 28, 2003, 2:48:48 PM11/28/03
to
,hj wrote:
> I've narrowed down my code as much as I can so that I can show you this bug.
> The reason the a's are there and not removed is because if I remove them the
> problem doesn't show itself. It seems that there is a pattern and the nth
> character does not show. Weird stuff.

[big snip]

> <body>
> contentdfdfdf
> </body>

[...]

> mail("webm...@aaaaaaaaaaa.com","acco...@aaaaaaa.com",$content,$header);
> ?>
>
> Try that code, changing the first mail attribute to your email address. You
> should get this output: "contentdfdfdf </html".

I get the full HTML (without headers).
When I try to view that HTML in my browser I see "contentdfdfdf", but I
didn't look at the source then

> Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Bug, perhaps?

Well ... "contentdfdfdf" *is* the body of that HTML.
What did you expect to see?
--
--= my mail address only accepts =--
--= Content-Type: text/plain =--
--= Size below 10K =--

Pedro Graca

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Nov 28, 2003, 3:23:59 PM11/28/03
to
,hj wrote:
[...]
> begin 666 test2.php
> M/#]P:' -"B @(" @(" @)&-O;G1E;G0@/2 G#0H@(" @(" @(#QH=&UL/@T*
[...]
> `
> end

mutt shows the HTML source (without the headers), if I view that in
elinks I see "contentdfdfdf"


What output did you expect?

Read the MIME RFC (RFC 2045)
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2045.html

,hj

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Nov 28, 2003, 3:32:45 PM11/28/03
to

"Pedro Graca" <hex...@hotpop.com> wrote in message
news:bq8asu$1vt4p9$1...@ID-203069.news.uni-berlin.de...
> ,hj wrote:

[snip]

In OE 6 I get the output "contentdfdfdf</html". It's the 1008th character
being removed that causes the partial </html> tag to show. Google shows a
few results on this issue:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Every+1008th+character+is+missing


Richard Hockey

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Nov 28, 2003, 4:28:22 PM11/28/03
to

",hj" <webm...@mail.com> wrote in message
news:bq8783$gs9$1...@titan.btinternet.com...

You wouldn't happen to be using PHP version 4.3.3 would you?

I had problems with random characters disappearing when using the mail()
function to send MIME encoded emails. This mail() bug has been reported at
the www.php.net website, it seems to have been fixed in 4.3.4.


Pedro Graca

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Nov 28, 2003, 5:16:20 PM11/28/03
to
Richard Hockey wrote:
> You wouldn't happen to be using PHP version 4.3.3 would you?
>
> I had problems with random characters disappearing when using the mail()
> function to send MIME encoded emails. This mail() bug has been reported at
> the www.php.net website, it seems to have been fixed in 4.3.4.

http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=26061

Seems it only happens in Windows and with php 4.3.3
I have php 4.3.3 but not Windows; no wonder I couldn't reproduce the
error!

Manuel Lemos

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Nov 29, 2003, 9:11:43 AM11/29/03
to
Hello,

On 11/28/2003 05:21 PM, ,hj wrote:
> Try that code, changing the first mail attribute to your email address. You
> should get this output: "contentdfdfdf </html".
>
> Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Bug, perhaps?

First, you should never send HTML only (Content-type: text/html)
messages. Many spam filters will discard your message. You should at
least have an alternative text part (text/plain). For that you should be
sending multipart/alternative messages, that include both the text and
HTML parts and let the end user program read what it can display better.

Second, you should always use an encoding method if you may have 8 bit
characters in your messages. For plain text or HTML, quoted-printable is
more appropriate.

Third, the mail() function has several bugs that is often better to
avoid it.

To solve any of these problems, you may want to try this class that
comes with sub-classes for deliverying messages via mail() but also via
sendmail/qmail/postfix/etc programs or even via SMTP.

http://www.phpclasses.org/mimemessage


--

Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP
http://www.phpclasses.org/

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