title: remove escape sequences from string in php
body: <p>I'm working with a mysqldump file that has escaped character sequences. I need to know the length of a string as its database value, but the dump has escape characters in it, which add length to the string. </p>
  
  <p>I've used <code>stripslashes()</code> which properly un-escapes single- and double-quotes, but it doesn't touch the <code>\r\n</code>. </p>
  
  <p>I'm concerned there are other escaped character sequences in there that I'm not aware of. Is there a function I can use that will give me the true length of the string as it would be in the database? If I have to build my own function, what other sequences should it handle?</p>