Since mb_decode_numericentity does not require all HTML entities
to end with ';', but allows them to be terminated by ANY non-digit
character, it doesn't make sense that valid entities which butt
up against the end of the input string are not converted.
As it turned out, supporting this case also made it possible
to simplify the code nicely.
This new implementation uses the new encoding conversion filters.
Aside from fewer LOC and (hopefully) improved readability,
the differences are as follows:
BEHAVIOR CHANGES:
- The old implementation used signed arithmetic when operating
on the 'convmap'. This meant that results could be surprising when
using convmap entries with 1 in the MSB. Further, types like 'int'
were used rather than those with a specific bit width, such as
'int32_t'. This meant that results could also depend on the
platform width of an 'int'.
Now unsigned arithmetic is used, with explicit bit widths.
- Similarly, while converting decimal numeric entities, the
legacy implementation would ensure that the value never overflowed
INT_MAX, and if it did, the entity would be treated as invalid
and passed through unconverted.
However, that again means that results depend on the platform
size of an 'int'. So now, we use a value with explicit bit width
(32 bits) to hold the value of a deconverted decimal entity, and
ensure that the entity value does not overflow that.
Further, because we are using an UNSIGNED 32-bit value rather
than a signed one, the ceiling for how large a decimal entity
can be is higher now.
All of this will probably not affect anyone, since Unicode
codepoints above U+10FFFF are invalid anyways. To see the
difference, you need to be using a text encoding like UCS-4,
which allows huge 'codepoints'.
- If it saw something which looked like a hex entity, but
turned out not to be a valid numeric entity, the old
implementation would sometimes convert the hexadecimal
digits a-f to A-F (uppercase). The new implementation passes
invalid numeric entities through without performing case
conversion.
- The old implementation of mb_encode_numericentity was
limited in how many decimal/hex digits it could emit.
If a text encoding like UCS-4 was in use, where 'codepoints'
can have huge values (larger than the valid range
stipulated by the Unicode standard), it would not error
out on a 'codepoint' whose value was too large for it,
but would rather mangle the value and emit a numeric
entity which decoded to some other random codepoint.
The new implementation is able to emit enough digits to
express any value which fits in 32 bits.
PERFORMANCE:
Based on micro-benchmarks run on my development machine:
Decoding numeric HTML entities is about 4 times faster, for
both decimal and hexadecimal entities, across a variety of
input string lengths. Encoding is about 3 times faster.
Alex Dowad