securing user input

Hi: I am new to php but found this in a script and I think I understand what it does...it takes all user input (if you used post in the form) and adds slashes to protected chars...are the "cleaned" vars returned to HTTP_POST_VARS?... further, it goes into the array and removes <>|...but what if you are searching for ">"? Once you have added slashes, do you really need to kill those bad chars? Does anyone have a routine they would like to share that also checks size (to avoid buffer issues?). for (reset($HTTP_POST_VARS); $key = key($HTTP_POST_VARS); next ($HTTP_POST_VARS)) { $this = addslashes ($HTTP_POST_VARS[$key]); $this = strtr($this, ">", " "); $this = strtr($this, "<", " "); $this = strtr($this, "|", " "); $$key = $this; } Thanks Luis __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/