===== Syntax =====

<code php>
string preg_quote(string $str [, string $delimiter])
</code>

//(PHP 4, PHP 5)//

^ $str | The source string that you want to quote. |
^ $delimiter | An additional (non-standard) character which should be escaped.  This is normally used to escape the character which delimits the start and end of the pattern (see example below). |

^ RETURNS | The quoted pattern string with special characters escaped (normally, this is done with a backslash character (\). |

===== What it Does =====

This function adds special escape codes to characters which have special meaning in a POSIX regular expression.  Use this to prevent undesirable results from unknown or user-entered patterns which are used in pattern matching.

===== Example =====

<code php>
// create the subpattern to match (escaping special chars)
$subpattern = preg_quote($_POST['keyword'], "|");

// match a phone number
$pattern = '|\b'.$subpattern.'\b|gi';

// attempt to match something
$nomatches = preg_match_all($pattern, $searchtext, $out);
</code>