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preg_quote

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

preg_quoteQuote regular expression characters

Description

preg_quote(string $str, ?string $delimiter = null): string

preg_quote() takes str 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.

The special regular expression characters are: . \ + * ? [ ^ ] $ ( ) { } = ! < > | : - #

Note that / is not a special regular expression character.

Note:

Note that preg_quote() is not meant to be applied to the $replacement string(s) of preg_replace() etc.

Parameters

str

The input string.

delimiter

If the optional delimiter is specified, it will also be escaped. This is useful for escaping the delimiter that is required by the PCRE functions. The / is the most commonly used delimiter.

Return Values

Returns the quoted (escaped) string.

Changelog

Version Description
7.3.0 The # character is now quoted
7.2.0 delimiter is nullable now.

Examples

Example #1 preg_quote() example

<?php
$keywords
= '$40 for a g3/400';
$keywords = preg_quote($keywords, '/');
echo
$keywords; // returns \$40 for a g3\/400
?>

Example #2 Italicizing a word within some text

<?php
// In this example, preg_quote($word) is used to keep the
// asterisks from having special meaning to the regular
// expression.

$textbody = "This book is *very* difficult to find.";
$word = "*very*";
$textbody = preg_replace ("/" . preg_quote($word, '/') . "/",
"<i>" . $word . "</i>",
$textbody);
?>

Notes

Note: This function is binary-safe.

See Also

add a note

User Contributed Notes 7 notes

up
72
Anonymous
16 years ago
Wondering why your preg_replace fails, even if you have used preg_quote?

Try adding the delimiter / - preg_quote($string, '/');
up
4
Anonymous
3 years ago
I discovered that, in addition to escaping the special regular expression characters, preg_quote() encodes the NUL byte to its octal representation:

<?php
var_dump
(preg_quote("\0"));
?>

Output:

string(4) "\000"
up
16
zooly
14 years ago
To escape characters with special meaning, like: .-[]() and so on, use \Q and \E.

For example:

<?php echo ( preg_match('/^'.( $myvar = 'te.t' ).'$/i', 'test') ? 'match' : 'nomatch' ); ?>

Will result in: match

But:

<?php echo ( preg_match('/^\Q'.( $myvar = 'te.t' ).'\E$/i', 'test') ? 'match' : 'nomatch' ); ?>

Will result in: nomatch
up
6
ed at happysoftware dot com
4 years ago
It should be noted that the forward slash is not escaped. Since many regexes are surrounded by forward slashes, if you have one in your regex as text you must escape it yourself otherwise it'll terminat the regex.
up
4
rwillmann at crooce dot com
6 years ago
List of specials is incomplete:

--- sample code ---

$specials = '.\+*?[^]$(){}=!<>|:-';

for ($i = 0; $i <= 255; $i++) {

if (chr($i) !== preg_quote(chr($i))) {

printf("Character 0x%02x quoted%s\n",
$i,
(strpos($specials, chr($i)) === FALSE) ? ' (+)' : '');
} /* if */
} /* for */

--- sample code ---

--- output ---

Character 0x00 quoted (+)
Character 0x21 quoted
Character 0x24 quoted
Character 0x28 quoted
Character 0x29 quoted
Character 0x2a quoted
Character 0x2b quoted
Character 0x2d quoted
Character 0x2e quoted
Character 0x3a quoted
Character 0x3c quoted
Character 0x3d quoted
Character 0x3e quoted
Character 0x3f quoted
Character 0x5b quoted
Character 0x5c quoted
Character 0x5d quoted
Character 0x5e quoted
Character 0x7b quoted
Character 0x7c quoted
Character 0x7d quoted

--- output ---
up
-1
rawr at t-regx dot com
3 years ago
To have a higher level control of what your pattern looks like, try T-Regx:

Pattern::inject('This is (my|our) pattern: @', [$_GET['name']]);
up
-10
noreply at t-regx dot com
4 years ago
If you find yourself using too much of preg_quote(), it's a good sign you might want to use Prepared Patterns from T-Regx library: https://t-regx.com/docs/handling-user-input
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