Entropy Reducers Amalgamated

PHP's PEAR library of packages has a nice configuration file parsing tool called, aptly enough, Config.php. (It appears to not be well updated--it hasn't been reported touched since 2007.) For most uses, it's pretty convenient and quick to use, especially if you are using and maintaining different types of configuration files, like Windows INI files, for your applications. I seem to have found an interesting quirk in how it processes lines with commas in the text. I have a configuration file with a stanza like:

[files]
fileroot="."
filetypes="Type1,Type 2,Type3,Type4"

Note that there are no spaces around the commas.

What I would like to have happen is that I parse that using regular INIFile rules:

$configRoot =& $config->parseConfig($configFile,"IniFile");
$filesConfig =& $configRoot->getItem("section","files");
$fileRoot=$filesConfig->getItem("directive","fileroot")->getContent();
$fileTypes=$filesConfig->getItem("directive","filetypes")->getContent();

(This isn't meant to be the best example of PHP code extant, only code that is able to elicit the bug I want to show.)

If I then echo out the content of $fileTypes, I'll get:

Type1,Type 2,Type3,Type4

Note that the spaces in "Type 2" are preserved. If I change the filetypes line to read

filetypes="Type1,○Type2,Type3,Type4"

Where "○" represents a space (ASCII 32), I get

Type 2,Type3,Type4

The first element has been lost! If, however, I type

filetypes="Type1○,Type 2,Type3,Type4"

(note that there are spaces in the "Type 2" entry, but the 2 abuts a comma, as does the capital T) I get:

Type1○,Type 2,Type3,Type4

The entire entry is there, including the space before the comma! (This is made clear by doing a

var_dump(split(",",$fileTypes))

and getting

array
  0 => string 'Type1' (length=5)

  1 => string 'Type 2' (length=6)
  2 => string 'Type3' (length=5)

  3 => string 'Type4' (length=5)

in the first case,

array
  0 => string 'Type 2' (length=6)

  1 => string 'Type3' (length=5)
  2 => string 'Type4' (length=5)

in the second, and

array
  0 => string 'Type1 ' (length=6)

  1 => string 'Type 2' (length=6)
  2 => string 'Type3' (length=5)

  3 => string 'Type4' (length=5)

in the third. (Formatting courtesy of xdebug).