How to use PDO::quote without getting string surrounded by quotes?

Question

I try to use PDO::quote to escape a string in a LIKE expression, so the user string must not be surrounded like in :

LIKE "%userStringToEscape%"

Is there a way to do that ?

Answer 1

$var = "%userStringToEscape%";
$var = $stmt->quote($var);
$sql = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE field LIKE $var";

same goes for the prepared statements

Answer 2

Use substr($db->quote($var), 1, -1)

Really though, don't. You'll end up with larger problems than the ones you started with.

The clean solution to do this is, of course, $db->quote('%'.$var.'%')