Note that mysql_real_escape_string doesn't prepend backslashes to \x00, \n, \r, and and \x1a as mentionned in the documentation, but actually replaces the character with a MySQL acceptable representation for queries (e.g. \n is replaced with the '\n' litteral). (\, ', and " are escaped as documented) This doesn't change how you should use this function, but I think it's good to know.