removing '%' from user input

[TruckStuff]

I'm having a problem where some bonehead users are putting percent signs in their input. The is causing lots of problems with matching and replacing existing data because the wildcard makes a lot more rows match than should. htmlspecialchars won't do it for me, nor will a couple of other functions I have tried. I'd like to avoid simply deleting them if at all possible. Thoughts?

[ultraslacker]

addslashes()

[kevinsequeira]

$data = str_replace("%","",$data);

http://ca.php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php

reg
kevin

[TruckStuff]

Addslashes doesn't put slashes in front of % signs from what I have tested:

$string = '%';
echo addslashes ($string);

returns:

%
not 
\%

As I said before, I'd like to avoid simply deleting the % with str_replace, but if there is no other way, I'll have to do it.