SQL Escape Characters in PHP

Hi, quick question. When you send an sql statement to a database (through ODBC, etc.) if a string that you send has single quotes in it they have to be escaped. JDBC has a thing where you can automatically have it escape the string for you, for instance: java.sql.PreparedStatement pstmt = connection.prepareStatement("insert into clients (client_name, client_address) values(?, ?)"); pstmt.setString(1, "St. Joseph's Hospital"); pstmt.setString(2, "1 Good Samaritan Rd."); pstmt.executeUpdate(); You don't even have to put single quotes around the question marks in the prepared statement string because it knows what to do. Is there anything equivalent in PHP, or do I have to do ereg_replaces on every string I send to the database to make sure I don't break it with unescaped quote characters? Thanks! Keith