printing character ' and " in asp using vbscript

[S N]

how to print apostrophe character ' and double quote " in asp using
vbscript.
my code using response.write replaces " character with inverted question
mark.
please help

[S N]

how to print apostrophe character ' and double quote " in asp using

vbscript. my code using response.write replaces " character with question
mark.
please help

[S N]

how to print apostrophe character ' and double quote " in asp using

vbscript. my code using response.write replaces " character with inverted
question mark.
please help

[nospam Paal @everywheredotcom Jon Paal [MSMD]]

'******************************************************************
Function DataPrep(strText)
'
'PURPOSE: prep data text entry
'
'PARAMETERS: strText -- text string to modify
'******************************************************************
If NOT isNull(strText) then

DataPrep = Replace(strText, ";", "")
DataPrep = Replace(DataPrep, "'", "'")
DataPrep = Replace(DataPrep, """", """)
DataPrep = Replace(DataPrep, "<", "&lt;")
DataPrep = Replace(DataPrep, ">", "&gt;")

End if

End Function

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:OCmJVc5h...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...

[Bob Barrows [MVP]]

Jon Paal [MSMD] wrote:
> '******************************************************************
> Function DataPrep(strText)
> '
> 'PURPOSE: prep data text entry
> '
> 'PARAMETERS: strText -- text string to modify
> '******************************************************************
> If NOT isNull(strText) then
>
> DataPrep = Replace(strText, ";", "")
> DataPrep = Replace(DataPrep, "'", "&apos;")
> DataPrep = Replace(DataPrep, """", "&quot;")
> DataPrep = Replace(DataPrep, "<", "&lt;")
> DataPrep = Replace(DataPrep, ">", "&gt;")
>
> End if
>
> End Function
>

??
What's wrong with

Response.Write Server.HTMLEncode(strText)

--
Microsoft MVP - ASP/ASP.NET
Please reply to the newsgroup. This email account is my spam trap so I
don't check it very often. If you must reply off-line, then remove the
"NO SPAM"

[nospam Paal @everywheredotcom Jon Paal [MSMD]]

"Dataprep" type function allows for customization, otherwise nothing wrong with your suggested solution...

[Evertjan.]

Jon Paal [MSMD] wrote on 17 mrt 2008 in
microsoft.public.inetserver.asp.general:

> "Dataprep" type function allows for customization, otherwise nothing
> wrong with your suggested solution...

whose?

--
Evertjan.
The Netherlands.
(Please change the x'es to dots in my emailaddress)

[msnews]

where to get the values of constants like &apos and &quot
also i want to replace single " and not double ""

please advise

"Jon Paal [MSMD]" <Jon nospam Paal @ everywhere dot com> wrote in message
news:13tqv4u...@corp.supernews.com...

[Daniel Crichton]

&apos; and &quot; are HTML entities - these are converted by web browsers
into ' and " respectively.

If you just want to print the literal characters, that's easy enough:

Response.Write """"

will print a single " (there are 4 " in that line, the two outer ones are
the string containers, the two inners generate the single " as doubling them
up inside a string turns them into a literal instead).

another example

Response.Write "<a href=""http://myurl.com/apage.asp"">This is a link</a>"

Notice how you just double up the quotation marks.

For an apostrophe you don't need to do anything special:

Response.Write "They're not here"

So what problem are you having with quotes and apostrophes?

Dan

[Bob Barrows [MVP]]

Daniel Crichton wrote:
> &apos; and &quot; are HTML entities - these are converted by web
> browsers into ' and " respectively.
>
> If you just want to print the literal characters, that's easy enough:
>
> Response.Write """"
>
> will print a single " (there are 4 " in that line, the two outer ones
> are the string containers, the two inners generate the single " as
> doubling them up inside a string turns them into a literal instead).
>
> another example
>
> Response.Write "<a href=""http://myurl.com/apage.asp"">This is a
> link</a>"
> Notice how you just double up the quotation marks.
>
> For an apostrophe you don't need to do anything special:
>
> Response.Write "They're not here"
>
> So what problem are you having with quotes and apostrophes?
>

From the original post: "my code using response.write replaces " character
with question
mark"

It's most likely a codepage problem. I've been holding back from replying to
this because Anthony typically has the most reliable advice for these
situations.

[Daniel Crichton]

Bob wrote on Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:43:16 -0400:

> Daniel Crichton wrote:
>> &apos; and &quot; are HTML entities - these are converted by web
>> browsers into ' and " respectively.

>> If you just want to print the literal characters, that's easy enough:

>> Response.Write """"

>> will print a single " (there are 4 " in that line, the two outer ones
>> are the string containers, the two inners generate the single " as
>> doubling them up inside a string turns them into a literal instead).

>> another example

>> Response.Write "<a href=""http://myurl.com/apage.asp"">This is a
>> link</a>"
>> Notice how you just double up the quotation marks.

>> For an apostrophe you don't need to do anything special:

>> Response.Write "They're not here"

>> So what problem are you having with quotes and apostrophes?

> From the original post: "my code using response.write replaces "
> character with question mark"

I missed that, I'd been reading the other replies.

> It's most likely a codepage problem. I've been holding back from
> replying to this because Anthony typically has the most reliable
> advice for these situations.

Then again it could be anything without the OP supplying example code that
has the problem, as it might be down to the way he's trying to print those
characters (for instance, using CHR(X) and providing the wrong X value).

--
Dan

[Anthony Jones]

"Bob Barrows [MVP]" <reb0...@NOyahoo.SPAMcom> wrote in message
news:%233n2yuB...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

> Daniel Crichton wrote:
> > &apos; and &quot; are HTML entities - these are converted by web
> > browsers into ' and " respectively.
> >
> > If you just want to print the literal characters, that's easy enough:
> >
> > Response.Write """"
> >
> > will print a single " (there are 4 " in that line, the two outer ones
> > are the string containers, the two inners generate the single " as
> > doubling them up inside a string turns them into a literal instead).
> >
> > another example
> >
> > Response.Write "<a href=""http://myurl.com/apage.asp"">This is a
> > link</a>"
> > Notice how you just double up the quotation marks.
> >
> > For an apostrophe you don't need to do anything special:
> >
> > Response.Write "They're not here"
> >
> > So what problem are you having with quotes and apostrophes?
> >
>
> From the original post: "my code using response.write replaces " character
> with question
> mark"
>
> It's most likely a codepage problem. I've been holding back from replying
to
> this because Anthony typically has the most reliable advice for these
> situations.
>

Thanks for the vote of confidence Bob but it baffles me. ;)

Since " is within the lower ascii range 0-127 the only encoding that could
screw this up would be UTF-16. But if the browser thought it was getting
say Windows-1252 and yet the server was encoding to UTF-16 (or vice versa)
the content would be completely garbled.

I suspect that what the OP thinks is happening and what actually is are very
different. Like Dan says I think we would need to see some actual code to
make sense of this.

--
Anthony Jones - MVP ASP/ASP.NET

[S N]

i am attaching the sample code. actually i am printing from a field in access database. the text entered in the database contains single quotes and double quotes. when i try to print them using response.write, the double quotes are getting replaced with question marks. i have tried the method of

 

DataPrep = Replace(DataPrep, """", "&quot;")

 

still problem remains.

 

i also tried

response.write(server.htmlencode(myrs(3)))   ' where myrs is adodb recordset

 

still the problem remains

 

i am also attaching the header lines from my asp page

 

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%>

 

<HTML><HEAD>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us" />

the problem is still not solved

 

please help

 

 

 

"Anthony Jones" <A...@yadayadayada.com> wrote in message news:%23jGo1GR...@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...

[Paul Randall]

Within VBScript strings, all characters are stored as 16-bit Unicode values, so you can't easily tell whether your string contains Unicode or not.  Depending on how well the data was scrubbed before being put in the database, it may contain some Unicode.  Depending on how your computer is set up, it is not obvious when you display Unicode characters in a message box.  VBScript includes a number of functions for interacting with Unicode characters -- the W versions of things like ChrW and AscW.

 

Here is a short script that demonstrates a message box displaying a string that includes a Unicode character (that looks something like a single quote) and the same string with that character removed (using a simple regular expression).

 

Dim s
s = "Hello *" & ChrW(900) & "* unicode"
msgbox s & vbcrlf & sRemoveUnicode(s)

 

Function sRemoveUnicode(sAnyString)
'Returns sAnyString with all unicode [actually, all
' characters outside the range ChrW(0) to
' ChrW(255)] removed.  VBScript strings are made
' up of 16-bit characters so they can handle a
' lot of unicode stuff.

 

With New RegExp
 .Pattern = "[^\u0000-\u007F]"
 sRemoveUnicode = .Replace(sAnyString, "")
End With

End Function

 

-Paul Randall

 

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:OgWpL$piIHA...@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...

[Anthony Jones]

My guess is that they are not " " but are ‘ “ ” typically cut'n'pasted in from Microsoft Word.

 

These are still in the Windows-1252 range of characters but are not strictly in the iso-8859-1 set.

 

Don't use http-equiv meta tags use real headers instead.

 

IOW ditch the meta tags and include this:-

 

<%Response.CharSet = "Windows-1252"%>

 

I'm not hopeful because you are probably using IE and IE will treat ISO-8859-1 as Windows-1252 anyway.

 

Always use Server.HtmlEncode on values retrieved from the Database.  Stop mucking about with any other approach.

 

If that doesn't work view the html source from the browser.  What is the server actually sending.

 

Another alternative is stop using Windows-1252.

 

Save your pages as UTF-8 change the codepage at the top of the page to 65001 and include Response.CharSet = "UTF-8" in your page.

 

BTW, Have you looked at the field content directly using the DB management tool?

 

--
Anthony Jones - MVP ASP/ASP.NET

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:OgWpL$piIHA...@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...

[S N]

you have guessed it right, i am copying the text from ms word but am cleaning wordhtml using wordcleaner 3.

further, i checked using

Response.CharSet = "UTF-8"

in this case the ? characters appears on every newline including the places where it was appearing earlier.

 

when i use

<%Response.CharSet = "Windows-1252"%>

 

still the problem of question marks remain. but it appears only as was appearing earlier (in place of " and not on every new line)

i checked the view source- the server is sending ? character itself to the browser.

when i checked the database field, it is showing in invalid character in the shape of a rectangle stored where i want the  double quote " printed.

 

please help.

"Anthony Jones" <A...@yadayadayada.com> wrote in message news:ejiWc1ti...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

[S N]

i changed the codepage tp 65001 and charset to utf-8, then the question mark ? showing earlier, has changed to the rectangle as shown below.

‘

the database field also shows the same character stored in it.

please help.

 

"Anthony Jones" <A...@yadayadayada.com> wrote in message news:ejiWc1ti...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

[S N]

i am sorry, but the character showing as rectangle in my pc during composing of the message to this group, is now showing as  ‘ in the message finally appearing on the server.

please help

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:%23m$1focjI...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

[S N]

i have changed the codepage and charset on all pages of my website to 65001 and utf-8.

but now even apostrophe is showin as a rectangle or strange character.

please help.

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:uPZpO2cj...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

[nospam Paal @everywheredotcom Jon Paal [MSMD]]

The solutions provided work for others. The problem you have is not an ASP problem per se.

I suspect you will need to look elsewhere in your database/server/browser to find the problem.

I suggest you start debugging by allowing the page to be viewed by someone else with another browser so you can start eliminating
variables.

Narrow down the problem to where it can be isolated and then you may be able to resolve this matter.

[S N]

which group should i consult. please help

"Jon Paal [MSMD]" <Jon nospam Paal @ everywhere dot com> wrote in message

news:13ufof3...@corp.supernews.com...

[nospam Paal @everywheredotcom Jon Paal [MSMD]]

I would start here:

microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript

[S N]

i am doing just that.
i am asking for help from the group
microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript

please help.

"Jon Paal [MSMD]" <Jon nospam Paal @ everywhere dot com> wrote in message

news:13ufshh...@corp.supernews.com...

[Anthony Jones]

You need to make sure response.charset and response.codepage are consistent otherwise you will get mess.

 

Its clear that you problem is with the data in the DB.

--
Anthony Jones - MVP ASP/ASP.NET

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:O3b5Voc...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

[Anthony Jones]

All I'm seeing is a standard apostrophe.

 

If what you see in the DB is not the character you are expecting then your problem is probably now with the languages you have installed.  I don't think all glyphs are installed for each font by default, you need to install the appropriate language for the system to be able to render them.

 

How is did the data arrive in the DB?  Via HTML Form and ASP?

 

 

 

--
Anthony Jones - MVP ASP/ASP.NET

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:%23m$1focjI...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

[Anthony Jones]

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:uCtqModj...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

> which group should i consult. please help
>

This as good a group as any to get help with this issue.

My current guess is that the data has been entered by a Form post via ASP.
In correct codepage settings have corrupted the data entered into the DB.

[Paul Randall]

Thanks for posting one of your problematic characters.  I think one of the problems is that a number of distinct concepts, such as charset, font, and locale, are being blurred together.  At first you mentioned having problems with the single and double quote characters, and defined them as apostrophe character ' and double quote ".  Recently you posted the ‘ character, which I assume is what you meant by an apostrophe character.  It certainly looks a lot like what I would call a single quote, but if you put my single quote ('), and your single quote together, you can see that they are different: (‘').  Well, maybe you can see the difference, and maybe you can't.  It all depends on what font the characters are being displayed in.  I think in general, if a font does not contain a glyph for a character, then it displays a square or rectangular box for that character.  I think most fonts contain glyphs for all characters in the range Chr(32) to Chr(127).  Many fonts contain glyphs for characters in the range Chr(128) to Chr(255) too.  Many fonts also include glyphs for some characters in the range ChrW(256) to ChrW(65535), which are Unicode characters.  My knowledge of Unicode is limited, so some of my terminology may not be technically correct, and I would appreciate being corrected.

 

Copy the code below into a .vbs file and run it.  You will get two message boxes.  The first message box will contain two lines:

 

Hello *'΄‘* Unicode

΄‘

The first line contains a mixture of what might be considered Unicode and non-Unicode characters.  The three characters between the asterisks (*) might all be considered single quotes, but only the first one is Chr(39), the character I consider a single quote.  The second one is ChrW(900), and the third one is your single quote, ChrW(8216).

 

The second line displays what is left of the first line after removing all characters whose AscW value is less than 255.

 

I included the ChrW(900) character because it illustrates how differently certain characters may be handled.

 

The second message box contains info about the two Unicode characters:

 

1 ΄ 63 ? 900 ΄

2 ‘ 145 ‘ 8216 ‘

 

The six columns contain the following:
1) i (position within the string)
2) Mid(s, i, 1) the character at position i.
3) Asc(Mid(s, i, 1)) value of the character, sometimes and sometimes not.
4) Chr(Asc(Mid(s, i, 1))) Character associated with the reported Asc value.
5) AscW(Mid(s, i, 1)) Unicode value of the character.
6) ChrW(AscW(Mid(s, i, 1))) Character associated with the reported AscW value.

 

The Asc function almost always returns an 8-bit value, and AscW returns a 16-bit value.  For certain Locales, Asc returns the same 16-bit value as AscW.  See the scripting help file for info on the GetLocale and SetLocale functions.  The thing to note is that depending on Locale, for some Unicode characters, the Asc function returns returns 63, a value that corresponds to a question mark, and for others it returns a value under 256 that displays the same character as is displayed by the Unicode character.  So ChrW(900) maps to a question mark but ChrW(8216) maps to Chr(145).  I don't have any examples that would produce the inverted question mark you talked about in your early posts.

 

Your posts talk about a number of code pages and charsets, like 65001 and utf-8 and iso-8859-1.  I believe that charset 65001 represents all characters as fixed-length two-byte values, so it can handle all the thousands of standard Unicode characters. UTf-8 is a variable length encoding that uses one to four bytes to represent a character.  It can handle all the characters that charset 65001 can handle.  Charset iso-8859-1 can only handle 256 8-bit characters.

 

I think you should build a little standalone VBScript that displays many of your problematic characters in something like the six columns I did above, and post the result.  Perhaps we can figure out a way to fix the problem after you show us what the problem is.  It might help if you tell us your Locale number too.  Control-C can be used to copy the text from a message box.

 

Option Explicit
Dim i, j, s, sMsg
s = "Hello *'" & ChrW(900) & "‘* Unicode"
msgbox s & vbcrlf & sKeepOnlyUnicode(s)
s = sKeepOnlyUnicode(s)

 

For i = 1 To Len(s)
 sMsg = sMsg & i & vbTab & Mid(s, i, 1) & vbTab & _
  Asc(Mid(s, i, 1)) & vbTab & Chr(Asc(Mid(s, i, 1))) & vbTab & _
  AscW(Mid(s, i, 1)) & vbTab & ChrW(AscW(Mid(s, i, 1))) & vbCrLf
Next 'i
MsgBox sMsg

 

Function sKeepOnlyUnicode(sAnyString)
'Returns sAnyString with only Unicode [actually, all

' characters outside the range ChrW(0) to

' ChrW(255)] being kept.  VBScript strings are made

' up of 16-bit characters so they can handle a

' lot of Unicode stuff.
With New RegExp
 .Global = True
 .Pattern = "[\u0000-\u00FF]"
 sKeepOnlyUnicode = .Replace(sAnyString, "")
End With
End Function 'sKeepOnlyUnicode(sAnyString)

 

-Paul Randall

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:%23m$1focjI...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

[Daniel Crichton]

From your posts, I'd say that wordcleaner isn't doing what you expect -
every quote you've posted as a paste from your text is a curly open quote
which is what I'd expect a copy and paste direct from Word to include.

Dan

[S N]

i have checked the access database. when i open the access table, there also i am finding the rectangular block whereever i expect apostrophe .

 

also i have started using server.htmlencode for retrieving values from the database. but it displays the new line characters and paragraph characters (<BR> and <p> notations) stored in the text field as such. meaning instead of using these characters as commands for new line it is displaying them as it is, ie as "<BR>" and "<p>". in this way the paragraph boundaries has gone.

 

please help me with the above two problems.

 

"Paul Randall" <paul...@cableone.net> wrote in message news:OOTWT7fj...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

[Anthony Jones]

>i have checked the access database. when i open the access table,
>there also i am finding the rectangular block whereever i expect apostrophe
.
>also i have started using server.htmlencode for retrieving values from the
>database. but it displays the new line characters and paragraph characters
>(<BR> and <p> notations) stored in the text field as such. meaning instead
of
>using these characters as commands for new line it is displaying them as
it is,
>ie as "<BR>" and "<p>". in this way the paragraph boundaries has gone.

If access is showing the wrong character that indicates the data is corrupt.

If the field contains HTML (which it appears it does if it has <br> and <p>
elements that you expect to be honors) then you should not be using
Server.HTMLEncode. It has to be assumed that a field containing HTML is
already HTML encoded.

This is a long thread, I can't remember if you indicated how the data
arrived in the DB in the first place.

[S N]

i had copied the data from a word file and using control-c i had pasted it
into a richtext textbox in my asp form.

also please tell me how to ensure that regardless of whether the data is
html encoded or not, my server.htmlencode should work alright.

"Anthony Jones" <A...@yadayadayada.com> wrote in message

news:expbSYCm...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...

[Mike Brind [MVP]]

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:%23YLk4eC...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...

I haven't read the whole thread, but pasting directly from Word into a rich
text box is asking for trouble. I recommend pasting from Word into Notepad,
then taking the result and pasting it into the Rich text box. Word
sometimes does odd things with what should be "double quotes". And it
retains a whole load of Word-specific formatting - often over-riding your
carefully crafted css.

--
Mike Brind
Microsoft MVP - ASP/ASP.NET

[S N]

also please tell me how to ensure that regardless of whether the data is
html encoded or not, my server.htmlencode should work alright.

"Mike Brind [MVP]" <paxt...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OtkF6xHm...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

[Adrienne Boswell]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "S N" <uand...@yahoo.com>
writing in news:#YLk4eCm...@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl:

I would suggest using a client side script to ensure the data pasted
from Word is going in correctly. Word is notorious for really bad,
bloated markup. Google for WYSIWYG textarea - I like the one from The
Man in Blue at [http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/widgEditor/].

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

[Mike Brind [MVP]]

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:u1pVKANm...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...

As Anthony said, if you are entering html code into the database with the
idea that this takes effect when you pull it back to a web page, you do not
want to server.htmlencode it. Since you are using a Rich Text Editor, I am
assuming that this will apply html tags to the text on entry, and you want
them to act on the output.

What you really want to do is to make sure no javascript or clientside
vbscript gets injected. One way to do this is just to reject any input that
contains the string "<script>" in it during your server-side validation.

[S N]

you have guessed it very correctly that i am entering html code into the database (like table tags <td> <tr> in particular) with the 
idea that this takes effect when it is pulled back to a web page, and hence i dont want to server.htmlencode it.

 

can you suggest a server side validation script which does as indicated below by you. else can you suggest an alternate method of achieving the above (ensuring the table tags get translated into tables on the client side).

 

please help.

[Mike Brind [MVP]]

"S N" <uand...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:OI%23$718mIH...@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...

>> As Anthony said, if you are entering html code into the database with the
>> idea that this takes effect when you pull it back to a web page, you do
>> not
>> want to server.htmlencode it. Since you are using a Rich Text Editor, I
>> am
>> assuming that this will apply html tags to the text on entry, and you
>> want
>> them to act on the output.
>>
>> What you really want to do is to make sure no javascript or clientside
>> vbscript gets injected. One way to do this is just to reject any input
>> that
>> contains the string "<script>" in it during your server-side validation.
>>
>> --
>> Mike Brind
>> Microsoft MVP - ASP/ASP.NET
>>
>
>

> you have guessed it very correctly that i am entering html code into the
> database (like table tags <td> > <tr> in particular) with the
> idea that this takes effect when it is pulled back to a web page, and
> hence i dont want to > server.htmlencode it.
>
> can you suggest a server side validation script which does as indicated
> below by you. else can you > suggest an alternate method of achieving
> the above (ensuring the table tags get translated into tables > on the
> client side).

'input is the posted content from the Rich Text Editor

If InStr(input, "<string>") > 0 Then
'reject it
Else
'process it
End If