[wp-hackers] Changes to widget data in 2.3?

[Jairus Pryor]

I'm testing an upgrade to 2.3, and I noticed that widgets were having
problems, but only on pages on which I hadn't made any changes to the
widgets since upgrading. If I saved a page as-is, the widgets would
start rendering problem-free.

So I saved a page (having made no changes), and looked at the DB
before and after:

Before
(4082, 2935, '_widgeties',
'a:3:{s:9:"sidebar-1";a:1:{i:0;s:4:"pb-3";}s:9:"sidebar-2";a:1:{i:0;s:4:"pb-1";}s:9:"sidebar-3";a:1:{i:0;s:4:"pb-2";}}'),

After
(4082, 2935, '_widgeties',
's:117:"a:3:{s:9:"sidebar-1";a:1:{i:0;s:4:"pb-3";}s:9:"sidebar-2";a:1:{i:0;s:4:"pb-1";}s:9:"sidebar-3";a:1:{i:0;s:4:"pb-2";}}";'),

...so the change that I can see is that it's now part of the data is
encapsulated, like so:

s:117:"DATAHERE";

Does anyone know what the "s:117" is referring to, and what the change
was made in regards to?

Jairus