How to open file with special characters in the name

Question

In PHP, how can I open a file that has special characters in the name?

The name is similar to iPad|-5542fa5501f31.log

Per another forum, I've tried:

$logid = str_replace(" ", "\x20", $_GET['logid']);
$logid = str_replace("|", "\x7C", $logid);

To massage the name, but that doesn't work for me either.

I've also already tried:

$dst_file = escapeshellarg($dst_file);

And of course started out with just straight:

$logid = $_GET['logid'];

The initial file was created by a PHP script on a Linux system. I'm confused why a PHP script can write a file name like that, but can't open it for reading.

Here's my current code:

$logid = str_replace(" ", "\x20", $_GET['logid']);
$logid = str_replace("|", "\x7C", $logid);
$logdate = str_replace("-", "/", $_GET['date'])."/";
$dst_file = $uploads_dir.$logdate.$logid.'.log';

// read the data from the log file
echo "<pre>\n";
if (file_exists($dst_file)) {
    $file_handle = fopen($dst_file, "r");
    while (!feof($file_handle)) {
        $line = fgets($file_handle);
        if (strlen($line) < 3) continue;
        echo $line;
    }
    fclose($file_handle);
} else {
    echo $dst_file." does not exist\n";
}
echo "</pre>\n";

Answer 1

The only thing I found was to rename the file then open. The problem is no PHP functions so I tried system commands. None worked. The ftp RNTO command will rename it. But it would be much better to filter out "special characters" when the file is saved.

Answer 2

Somebody on another forum had suggested using popen, so I tried this, and it works:

$logid = $_GET['logid'];
$logdate = str_replace("-", "/", $_GET['date'])."/";
$dst_file = escapeshellarg($uploads_dir.$logdate.$logid.'.log');
echo "<pre>\n";
$handle = popen("cat ".$dst_file, 'r');
while(!feof($handle)) {
    $line = fgets($handle);
    if (strlen($line) > 3) {
        echo $line;
    }
    ob_flush();
    flush();
}
pclose($handle);
echo "</pre>\n";

The exact same code, except using fopen/fclose (no cat) will not work.

Answer 3

I was struggling to open the file "2017-09-19_Comisión_Ambiental.jpg", that "ó" was giving me this error :

file_get_contents ... failed to open stream: No such file or directory in ...

So I used utf8_decode on the filename and it worked :

$data = file_get_contents( utf8_decode( $filename ) );

I know this is an old question, there's even an accepted answer, I just posted it because it might help somebody.