Sanitizing potential MySQL strings with no database connection

How can I configure mysql_real_escape_string() to _not_ need a database connection in order to do it's work on a string. I understand that the function wants a database connection to determine which charset / encoding is in use, but in my case it will always be UTF-8. I have a file of reusable functions that I include in several scripts, one of them is a MySQL sanitation function, like this: function clean_mysql ($dirty) { $dirty=trim($dirty); $clean=mysql_real_escape_string($dirty); return $clean; } As different scripts reuse this code but connect to different databases, I need the function to work independently of the database connection. In other words, the include file cannot connect to the database but it still must perform the mysql_real_escape_string() function on UTF-8 data. Thanks in advance for any ideas. -- Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il