Formating text for ereg_replace()

say I have the string

$string = 'Hi im joe(joseph) and the $1.00 for the cafe';

Now how do i make a strink backslash the special characters in the ereg_replace(), so the string would look like this

$string = 'Hi im joe\(joseph\) and the \$1\.00 for the cafe';

Pretend like $string is what the user is giving you.. so it has to apply to all the charaters ()[]{}?+. and so on

$string = ereg_replace("([^A-Za-z0-9 ])","\\\\0",$string);

This will add a backslash to all characters not inside the square brackets.

You can add whatever characters inside the square brackets that you don't want to add a backslash too.

There has to be a easiar way to do this.. because I dont know all the characters they will be sending me

never mind i found it quotemeta();

Andrew