Whats the difference between a unformatted and a formatted string?

[Aurora078]

I don't get why i should format things. I heard it was good, but whats the difference anyway?

[bluegman991]

what kind of fromat?

formating strings to numbers / numbers to strings / strings to strings / numbers to numbers

int , float , currency , name , etc...?

[Aurora078]

In general

[Dominion]

it's explained on the php page for "sprintf" i think ?

[a_bertrand]

sprintf is a way to somehow secure yourself against SQL Injections. However it doesn't fix all and therefore it is not the solution I would recommend. I would myself use mysql_real_escape_string around any string and a ($var+0) against any number. With that you should be fine against SQL injections (again that's only part of the hacking issues your scripts can have).

[Dominion]

i only said about sprintf as on the php.net/sprintf page it explains what a formatted string is, it should never be used or relied upon to fix a security hole.