What are Magic Quotes

When on, all ' (single-quote), " (double quote), \ (backslash) and NULL characters are escaped with a backslash automatically. This is identical to what addslashes does.

There are three magic quote directives:

• magic_quotes_gpc Affects HTTP Request data (GET, POST, and COOKIE). Cannot be set at runtime, and defaults to on in PHP. See also get_magic_quotes_gpc.
• magic_quotes_runtime If enabled, most functions that return data from an external source, including databases and text files, will have quotes escaped with a backslash. Can be set at runtime, and defaults to off in PHP. See also set_magic_quotes_runtime and get_magic_quotes_runtime.
• magic_quotes_sybase If enabled, a single-quote is escaped with a single-quote instead of a backslash. If on, it completely overrides magic_quotes_gpc. Having both directives enabled means only single quotes are escaped as ''. Double quotes, backslashes and NULL's will remain untouched and unescaped. See also ini_get for retrieving its value.