You need to escape special characters to use user input inside a regular expression. Which functions would you use? (Choose 2)

Question

Options

• Aaddslashes()
• Bhtmlentities()
• Cpreg_quote()
• Dregex_quote()
• Equote_meta()

• A
  14% (4)
• B
  3% (1)
• C
  79% (23)
• D
  3% (1)

Explanation

Both preg_quote() (C) and quote_meta() (E) are PHP functions specifically designed to escape regex metacharacters (like ., *, ?, (, etc.) so that user input is treated as a literal string within a pattern. preg_quote() is the modern, preferred choice for PCRE patterns (used with preg_match, preg_replace, etc.), while quote_meta() escapes a similar set of metacharacters and has been available since PHP 4.

The distractors fail because addslashes() (A) escapes quotes and backslashes for contexts like database queries-not regex metacharacters. htmlentities() (B) converts characters to HTML entities for HTML output safety, which is completely unrelated to regex. regex_quote() (D) simply does not exist in PHP-it's a fabricated function name designed to trick you.

Memory tip: Match the prefix to the purpose-preg_quote() pairs with the preg_* family of functions, and quote_meta() sounds exactly like what it does: "quote the meta[characters]." If a function name doesn't exist in your mental PHP reference (like regex_quote), it's almost certainly a trap.

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