studying how "query strings" are handled by SMF.

[extrabigmehdi]

Hi,
I was quite annoyed by the fact that
variables passed through url  by SMF are  separated
by a semicolon (i.e ";")  instead of the traditional &.
Could someone explain  why this choice ? (looks eccentric to me)
If I've understood ,  when the php.ini is not properly set to
support semicolon , then it is essential to call the function cleanRequest.
So my second question  is:
is it wrong to call two times the cleanRequest function ?

I want to include the smf forum from an external script (i.e include(index.php) )
and to intercept/control some request by the user (the reason and explanations looks a bit hazy,
but if I produce something interesting I'll share this).

Thanks

[Dannii]

Using &'s in xhtml for anything other than entities is incorrect, so we use ;'s instead.

[extrabigmehdi]

Thanks... I never understood quite well why all website must be absolutely xhtml compliant ;
but it doesn't mind , let's make the effort 

I think that cleanRequest does more Job than I need i.e there's data cleaned I want to keep, before including smf.  I only need to retrieve properly $_GET  variable in all particular cases ...

[Dannii]

Although obviously less important, websites should be compliant for the same reason TVs must follow the standards, why cars must be built safely and why houses must follow the building code.