clarification on magic quotes

The following quote is from http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.php#ini.magic-quotes-gpc """ magic_quotes_gpc boolean Sets the magic_quotes state for GPC (Get/Post/Cookie) operations. When magic_quotes are on, all ' (single-quote), " (double quote), \ (backslash) and NUL's are escaped with a backslash automatically. If magic_quotes_sybase is also on, a single-quote is escaped with a single-quote instead of a backslash. """ I was hoping someone could just clarify something for me -- exactly WHAT is a Get/Post/Cookie operation in this case -- is it just during the uploading of Get/Post/Cookie data from the user agent, or is it also when I am taking a $_POST variable and passing it through a string-altering function, etc? I have a MySQL DB on the other side of my PHP scripts from the user, and am trying to decide whether or not I should stripslash() the data before entering it into the DB. This would defeat the purpose, but otherwise I end up with columns with values like "Mike\'s Pleasure Hut" or "Jean D\'Arc", and this will make queries tricky in the future. Thank you for your advice. Erik ---- Erik Price Web Developer Temp Media Lab, H.H. Brown pricee@hhbrown.com