PHP unserialize fails with non-encoded characters?

Question

$ser = \'a:2:{i:0;s:5:\"héllö\";i:1;s:5:\"wörld\";}\'; // fails
$ser2 = \'a:2:{i:0;s:5:\"hello\";i:1;s:5:\"world\";}\'; // works
$out = unserialize($ser);
$out2 = un         


        

Answer 1

In my case the problem was with line endings (likely some editor have changed my file from DOS to Unix).

I put together these apadtive wrappers:

function unserialize_fetchError($original, &$unserialized, &$errorMsg) {
    $unserialized = @unserialize($original);
    $errorMsg = error_get_last()['message'];
    return ( $unserialized !== false || $original == 'b:0;' );  // "$original == serialize(false)" is a good serialization even if deserialization actually returns false
}

function unserialize_checkAllLineEndings($original, &$unserialized, &$errorMsg, &$lineEndings) {
    if ( unserialize_fetchError($original, $unserialized, $errorMsg) ) {
        $lineEndings = 'unchanged';
        return true;
    } elseif ( unserialize_fetchError(str_replace("\n", "\n\r", $original), $unserialized, $errorMsg) ) {
        $lineEndings = '\n to \n\r';
        return true;
    } elseif ( unserialize_fetchError(str_replace("\n\r", "\n", $original), $unserialized, $errorMsg) ) {
        $lineEndings = '\n\r to \n';
        return true;
    } elseif ( unserialize_fetchError(str_replace("\r\n", "\n", $original), $unserialized, $errorMsg) ) {
        $lineEndings = '\r\n to \n';
        return true;
    } //else
    return false;
}