How To Escape Special Characters in SQL statements? - MySQL FAQs - Introduction to SQL Basics

There are a number of special characters that needs to be escaped (protected), if you want to include them in a character string. Here are some basic character escaping rules:

• The escape character (\) needs to be escaped as (\\).
• The single quote (') needs to be escaped as (\') or ('') in single-quote quoted strings.
• The double quote (") needs to be escaped as (\") or ("") in double-quote quoted strings.
• The wild card character for a single character (_) needs to be escaped as (\_).
• The wild card character for multiple characters (%) needs to be escaped as (\%).
• The tab character needs to be escaped as (\t).
• The new line character needs to be escaped as (\n).
• The carriage return character needs to be escaped as (\r).

Here are some examples of how to include special characters:

SELECT 'It''s Sunday!' FROM DUAL;
It's Sunday! 

SELECT 'Allo, C\'est moi.' FROM DUAL;
Allo, C'est moi.

SELECT 'Mon\tTue\tWed\tThu\tFri' FROM DUAL;
   Mon   Tue     Wed     Thu     Fri