non-ASCII "smart" quotes used in .htaccess cPanel-generated handler text

ALPCA Webmaster (Royce)

• January 31, 2024 02:38
• Edited

What is the best place to report the use of non-ASCII "smart" quotes in the .htaccess handler comment? I couldn't find the relevant text in any of cPanel's GitHub repos.

Symptom:

$ grep php74 .htaccess |  grep package
# Set the “ea-php74” package as the default “PHP” programming language.

$ grep php74 .htaccess | grep package | cut -d\  -f4
“ea-php74”
$ grep php74 .htaccess | grep package | cut -d\  -f4 | xxd -p
e2809c65612d7068703734e2809d0a

$ grep php74 .htaccess | grep package | cut -d\  -f9
“PHP”
$ grep php74 .htaccess | grep package | cut -d\  -f9 | xxd -p
e2809c504850e2809d0a

Expected output:

$ grep php74 .htaccess |  grep package
# Set the "ea-php74" package as the default "PHP" programming language.

$ grep php74 .htaccess | grep package | cut -d\  -f4
"ea-php74"
$ grep php74 .htaccess | grep package | cut -d\  -f4 | xxd -p
2265612d7068703734220a

$ grep php74 .htaccess | grep package | cut -d\  -f9
"PHP"
$ grep php74 .htaccess | grep package | cut -d\  -f9 | xxd -p
22504850220a

• 

  cPRex Jurassic Moderator

  • January 31, 2024 14:49

  Hey there!  i do see this in place, but since it's in a comment I don't believe it would cause any issues with the system.  Are you seeing a problem related to this?

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• 

  ALPCA Webmaster (Royce)

  • January 31, 2024 16:20
  • Edited

  Not a problem with automation, but rather a problem with human troubleshooting.

  Historically, many very difficult to track down bugs have been traced to non-obvious character corruption, or inadvertent character insertion, that isn't visible to the human eye.

  https://lists.apache.org/thread/tzh5js1r4p32ww88ht0mrd6ym4sx94hh

  A very common command line troubleshooting step is to run a text-based config file through 'strings' [edit: a diff against the non-string'd version, or grepping for non-ASCII] to catch any inadvertent inclusion of non-ASCII. It is therefore considered best practice to avoid unnecessary or cosmetic use of non-ASCII, including in comments [so that only unexpected problematic non-ASCII stands out].

  It seems like a corner case, until you have experienced the pain of an unsolvable bug, for which hours or days later you discover it's because of a character difference you couldn't see.

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  cPRex Jurassic Moderator

  • January 31, 2024 16:15

  I've let our developers know!

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