Convert special characters like ' \t ' to " \t " (a real tab)

Question

I want to make a CSV file importer on my website. I want the user to choose the delimiter.

The problem is when the form submits, the delimiter field is stored as '\t', for example, so when I'm parsing the file, I search for the string '\t' instead of a real TAB. It does the same thing with every special characters like \r, \n, etc...

I want to know the way or the function to use to convert these characters to their true representation without using an array like:

• 't' => "\t"
• 'r' => "\r"
• ...

Answer 1

You should probably decide what special chars will you allow and create a function like this one:

function translate_quoted($string) {
  $search  = array("\\t", "\\n", "\\r");
  $replace = array( "\t",  "\n",  "\r");
  return str_replace($search, $replace, $string);
}