Since the last update to **PHP5 5.4.0-3** on my Debian box I noticed that some pages have empty fields where text from the MySQL database should be.

I played around a bit and found the problem.

```php
<?php
$scselect = mysql_query("SELECT `name` FROM `forum_threads` WHERE `forum` = '1' ORDER BY `timestamp` DESC") or exit((mysql_error()));
    while ($scrow=mysql_fetch_array($scselect))
    {
        var_dump($scrow['name']);
        var_dump(htmlentities($scrow['name']));
    }
?>

```

strangely this is whats printed:

```php
string(18) "php hu3: the Forum"
string(0) ""
string(18) "php hu2 score-rule"
string(0) ""
string(6) "php hu"
string(0) ""
string(15) "HU 8: Binarycnt"
string(0) ""

```

but if I use htmlentities with hardcoded content -> htmlentities("test"); it works like charm.
Also if I do this:

```php
var_dump("a".$scrow['name']);

```

it also says

```php
string(0) ""

```

But it gets stranger. If I use htmlentities or htmlspecialchars with any other variable from the database it works just perfectly.

```php
var_dump(htmlspecialchars($scrow['ID'])); // prints for example string(2) "87"

```

what can be the cause of this?