On 04/09/2025 07:44, Jorg Sowa wrote:
> + enigmatic "all functions that take encoding option use
> php.internal_encoding as default (e.g.
> htmlentities/mb_strlen/mb_regex/etc)"
This is not very well worded, but I believe what it's saying is that a
number of functions have an "encoding" parameter, which defaults to some
INI setting. Since some of those settings were proposed to be removed,
and others added, they needed a new default.
However, further up it seems to propose a different default:
> Use default_charset as default for encoding related php.ini settings
> and module/functions.
What's more, there isn't actually a setting called
"php.internal_encoding", it's just called "internal_encoding".
Regardless of what was intended 11 years ago, we need to decide what to
do now.
htmlentities is currently documented like this
[https://www.php.net/htmlentities]:
> An optional argument defining the encoding used when converting
> characters.
>
> If omitted, encoding defaults to the value of the default_charset
> configuration option.
So, I guess that doesn't need to change, because that setting isn't
deprecated?
The standard wording for all the ext/mbstring functions is currently
this [e.g. https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mb-convert-case.php]:
> The encoding parameter is the character encoding. If it is omitted or
> null, the internal character encoding value will be used.
This is rather vague. In practice, it takes the value of
"mbstring.internal_encoding"; if not set, "internal_encoding"; if not
set, "default_charset" - but I can't find anywhere in the manual stating
this directly.
> Without INI values following functions are becoming pointless:
> - iconv_set_encoding
> - iconv_get_encoding
> - mb_internal_encoding
> - mb_http_output
Neither of the RFCs explicitly mention any of these functions, and none
has any deprecation note in the manual.
iconv_set_encoding triggers a deprecation notice at run-time, but
iconv_get_encoding does not.
mb_internal_encoding does not trigger any deprecation notice even when
it's used to set a new value. Until 5 years ago, it was also heavily
implied to be the correct function to use - until they were rebuilt from
stub files, the synopses for mbstring functions in the manual looked
like this:
> mb_convert_case ( string $str , int $mode [, string $encoding =
> mb_internal_encoding() ] ) : string
I suspect mb_internal_encoding is rather widely used to set a *run-time*
default, unrelated to the INI settings. If we want to remove it, let's
go all the way and make the encoding parameter mandatory in some future
version, rather than defaulting to a different global value.
--
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]
