wppaste
WordPress

like_escape( string $text ): string

Since
2.5.0
Source
wp-includes/deprecated.php:3463
Formerly used to escape strings before searching the DB. It was poorly documented and never worked as described.

Compatibility

Deprecated in WordPress 4.0.0. Use wpdb::esc_like()

WordPress
since 2.5.0
PHP
7.4–8.6-dev
  • 6.7.7
  • 6.8.8
  • 6.9.7
  • 7.0.4
  • 7.1.0

Present in every tracked release (6.7.7 to 7.1.0), and compiles on PHP 7.4 through 8.6-dev.

Parameters

$textstring
The text to be escaped.

Return value

string
text, safe for inclusion in LIKE query.

Performance profile

How much work a call to like_escape() does, and what it touches: the algorithmic scaling, the Zend instruction count per call across PHP versions, the hooks it hands control to, and the core code that calls it. Measured from the compiled opcodes, not a stopwatch, so every number is identical on any machine running the same PHP version, and every function in core is ranked by cost.

Cost class
Trivial

Touches nothing outside its own arguments.

Scaling
Constant

No loop in the body: the same number of instructions runs whatever you pass in.

Instructions
9

Executed per call on PHP 8.5. The body compiles to 9.

Plugin surface
None

Nothing here hands control to plugin code.

Called by
1

1 place in core call this, so the cost is paid more often than your own code shows.

What it touches

  • hookthird-party callbacksdo_action()one call below like_escape()

Further down the call graph this can also reach query, option, cache, serialize and transient. Those are the worst case, several calls deep and usually down an error path, not what a normal call pays.

What one call costs · 1 distinct outcome

One number would be a lie: the work depends on which branch runs. These are every distinct cost like_escape() can have, taken from its control-flow graph on PHP 8.5.

WhenInstructionsCalls it makes
always9_deprecated_function()

Across PHP versions

PHPCompiledExecutedBranchesNotes
8.6-dev990
8.5990
8.49903 fewer instructions than PHP 8.3
8.312120
8.212120
8.112120
7.412120

An instruction is not a fixed amount of time, so a matching count is not necessarily the same speed; what it rules out is a difference in the work itself.

Uses · 1

Used by · 1

Source code

View on Trac View on GitHub 

function like_escape($text) {	_deprecated_function( __FUNCTION__, '4.0.0', 'wpdb::esc_like()' );	return str_replace( array( "%", "_" ), array( "\\%", "\\_" ), $text );}

Changelog

Introduced in 2.5.0. Unchanged from 6.7.7 through 7.1.0.

  1. 6.7.7
  2. 6.8.8
  3. 6.9.7
  4. 7.0.4
  5. 7.1.0

Signature, return type and hooks compared across 5 parsed releases.

4.0.0
Deprecated. Use wpdb::esc_like()from the docblock
2.5.0
Introduced.from the docblock

About this page

Parsed data
Generated from the wordpress-develop 6.9.7 tag, from src/wp-includes/deprecated.php, and regenerated for each WordPress release so it tracks the code rather than a snapshot of it.
Corrections
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