[OPEN-ILS-DEV] en/decodeURIComponent vs un/escape()

[Whalen, Liam]

I am wondering about the use of encodeURIComponent() and decodeURIComponent as opposed to escape() and unescape() to parse URLs?  encodeURIComponent() and decodeURIComponent preserve UTF-8 characters while escape and unescape do not.  A quick 'grep -re "escape(" * | wc -l' in the /Evergreen-ILS-2.0.8/Open-ILS directory brings up 394 occurrences of escape() and unescape().  I imagine many of them do not deal with UTF-8 characters, but it might be a good idea to replace them all any way.
This website (http://www.dangrossman.info/2007/05/25/handling-utf-8-in-javascript-php-and-non-utf8-databases/) suggests using code like this:
if (encodeURIComponent) {
    string = encodeURIComponent(string); 
} else {
    string = escape(string);
}
in order to allow the ILS to work with older browsers.
I am willing to make the changes, but I wanted to get some input before going ahead and making close to 400 edits.
Liam

	Natural Resources Canada Library / Bibliothèque de Ressources naturelles Canada
615 rue Booth Street, 121, Ottawa, ON, Canada
K1A 0E9
Telephone / Téléphone : 613-995-4180
lwhalen at nrcan-rncan.gc.ca
Web: http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/library/ 


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