W3cubDocs

/PHP

quotemeta

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

quotemeta — Quote meta characters

Description

quotemeta(string $string): string

Returns a version of str with a backslash character (\) before every character that is among these:

. \ + * ? [ ^ ] ( $ )

Parameters

string

The input string.

Return Values

Returns the string with meta characters quoted, or false if an empty string is given as string.

Examples

Example #1 quotemeta() example

<?php

var_dump(quotemeta('PHP is a popular scripting language. Fast, flexible, and pragmatic.'));
?>

The above example will output:

string(69) "PHP is a popular scripting language\. Fast, flexible, and pragmatic\."

Notes

Note: This function is binary-safe.

See Also

© 1997–2025 The PHP Documentation Group
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License v3.0 or later.
https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.quotemeta.php