I’m trying to port a script that I wrote in bash some time ago

Question

Asked: May 22, 20262026-05-22T23:41:32+00:00 2026-05-22T23:41:32+00:00

I’m trying to port a script that I wrote in bash some time ago into PHP. One particular line is about escaping all non-alphanumeric characters.

In bash, I was able to do it as a one-liner as follows:

echo "aaa bbb::" | sed 's/\([^a-zA-Z0-9]\)/\\\1/g'
# => aaa\ bbb\:\:

The closest I got in PHP was with this:

echo preg_replace('/([^a-zA-Z0-9])/','\\\','aaa bbb::');
# => aaa\bbb\\

However I’m struggling to reuse my regex group inside preg_replace (I tried \1 and $1).

Can someone help me get this PHP one-liner right please?

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Editorial Team · Answer 1 · 2026-05-22T23:41:33+00:00

Editorial Team

echo preg_replace('/([^a-zA-Z0-9])/',"\\\\$1",'aaa bbb::');
//output => aaa\ bbb\:\:

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