A user, WorldIsMine, discovered an error when sending a private message with a title containing a string of random characters, including =213=-!(@#+@)(!*_(@#&(!)#. The recipient received a “Can’t access the page” error, while the sender was redirected to a random system-to-user message.
Mittineague suggested that the issue might be due to the hash (#) in the title, causing a fragment identifier conflict. sam identified the problem as a slug or routing bug, where the topic slug was being interpreted as a number due to the presence of 213 in the title.
The issue has been fixed by martin, as per this pull request, which treats titles that boil down to a number in the same way as if only the number was used as the topic title.
I was typing out a new message to one of my users, didn’t have time to write a normal title so I basically punched the keyboard and typed the following string as the title:
=213=-!(@#+@)(!*_(@#&(!)#
The intended user received the message, but when clicked, he received a “Can’t access the page.”
On my end, the website took me to a random system-to-user message.
I’ve tried to replicate this on meta, and when I sent the message I got redirected to an “Oooops, this page doesn’t exist.”
So, something is up, but I don’t know what. Something in that string causes a bug.
It feels like a stretch to consider a title like that causing problems a bug that interferes with normal use.
Contrived edge case or not, it would be a good idea to determine the actual problem.
I wouldn’t use meta to test, your dev setup is the place to test. Anyway, my guess is the hash is causing some kind of fragment identifier conflict. If you try the same but without the “#” is there still a problem?