RE: [PHP] Backslashing the [ and ] in a regex

On Wed, 2004-02-04 at 16:35, Sam Masiello wrote: > Thank you for the reply, Adam, but unfortunately it didn't work. Sorry bout that. Here's another shot at it. If I understand your goal correctly you want to escape the existing backslashes that proceed certain special characters (namely [:alpha:]+*/.|<>()$). That works fine so far, but you want to add the [ and ] characters to the list I am guessing. Here is one way you could do it: $rule = ereg_replace("\\\\[[:alpha:]+*/.|<>()$[\[]", "\\\\0", $rule); That turns this: a\a\+\-\*\[\{\<\| into this: a\\a\\+\-\\*\\[\{\\<\\| However, you will have a problem if there are double escaped characters, or characters that are escaped but on in your list. I suggest doing this: $rule = ereg_replace("\\\\", "\\\\", $rule); This turns this: a\a\+\-\*\\a+\\-\\*\\a\\[\[\{\\{\<\\<\|\\| into this: a\\a\\+\\-\\*\\\\a+\\\\-\\\\*\\\\a\\\\[\\[\\{\\\\{\\<\\\\<\\|\\\\| which should back out nicely when handled by postgres. -- Adam Bregenzer adam@bregenzer.net http://adam.bregenzer.net/