<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >preg_quote</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.44"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="PHP Manual" HREF="manual.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Perl-compatible Regular Expression functions" HREF="ref.pcre.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="preg_split" HREF="function.preg-split.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="preg_grep" HREF="function.preg-grep.html"></HEAD ><BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >PHP Manual</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="function.preg-split.html" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="function.preg-grep.html" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><H1 ><A NAME="function.preg-quote" >preg_quote</A ></H1 ><DIV CLASS="refnamediv" ><A NAME="AEN22841" ></A >preg_quote -- Quote regular expression characters</DIV ><DIV CLASS="refsect1" ><A NAME="AEN22844" ></A ><H2 >Description</H2 ><DIV CLASS="funcsynopsis" ><P ></P ><CODE CLASS="FUNCDEF" >string preg_quote</CODE >(string str);<P ></P ></DIV ><P > <B CLASS="function" >preg_quote()</B > takes <TT CLASS="parameter" ><I >str</I ></TT > and puts a backslash in front of every character that is part of the regular expression syntax. This is useful if you have a run-time string that you need to match in some text and the string may contain special regex characters.</P ><P > The special regular expression characters are: <TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="screen" >. \\ + * ? [ ^ ] $ ( ) { } = ! < > | :</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE > <DIV CLASS="note" ><BLOCKQUOTE CLASS="note" ><P ><B >Note: </B > This function was added in PHP 3.0.9.</P ></BLOCKQUOTE ></DIV ></P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="function.preg-split.html" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="manual.html" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="function.preg-grep.html" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >preg_split</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="ref.pcre.html" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >preg_grep</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >