newbie question: stripslashes vs. changing the php.ini file

Hello, This is my first post to this mailing list, so I hope this is clear enough... What are the consequences of turning off 'magic_quotes_gpc' (ignore quotes)in the php.ini file to avoid / marks in my comment form, vs. inserting the line 'stripslashes($var);' in the page itself? Is this something that's going to haunt me later on if I continue to develop my site using PHP? Cheers, Matt Cahill