PHP function to escape MySQL regexp syntax
escaping, mysql, php, regex
Solution
MySQL regexps are the ‘extended’ POSIX variant (ERE), available in PHP as the deprecated `ereg_` functions.
Unfortunately there is no `ereg_quote` in PHP, however PCRE's special characters are a superset of ERE's special characters, and backslash-escaping a non-special punctuation character doesn't harm it, so you can get away with using `preg_quote` safely.
(Naturally you will need parameterised queries or `mysql_real_escape_string` after that quoting, to stop the backslashes being misinterpreted as MySQL's non-ANSI-standard string literal escapes.)
Problem
I'm looking for something similar to preg_quote, but for the MySQL regexp syntax. Any ideas?