PHP Functions Essential Reference

preg_quote

string preg_quote(string input, [string delimiter]) 

input	String to escape
delimiter	Optional delimiter character to escape

Escapes all regular expression metacharacters in the input string.

Returns:

String with regular expression metacharacters escaped

Description:

Sometimes it’s necessary to have arbitrarily dynamic strings as parts of the regular expression pattern. These strings may contain characters that have special meaning to the regular expression engine, and for the engine to interpret them literally they need to be escaped, or “quoted.”

This function takes the input string and puts a backslash in front of every character that can be interpreted as part of regular expression syntax. If the optional delimiter parameter ...