Backslashes in php regular expressions

Damn this was frustrating! Trying to match a \ character in php? Don't expect the usual Perl behavior, finding \\ - it won't work. You have to search for \\\ ! And the solution was only found in a source code with google:

  function deslash($content) {
    // Note: \\\ inside a regex denotes a single backslash.

    // Replace one or more backslashes followed by a single
    // quote with a single quote.
    $content = preg_replace("/\\\+'/", "'", $content);

    // Replace one or more backslashes followed by a double
    // quote with a double quote.
    $content = preg_replace('/\\\+"/', '"', $content);

    // Replace one or more backslashes with one backslash.
    $content = preg_replace("/\\\+/", "\\", $content);

    return $content;
  }

2 hours wasted...