Suppose you want to reverse the operation, here is a way to "ldap_unescape"<?phpfunction ldap_unescape($string) { return preg_replace_callback( "/\\\\[\da-z]{2}/", function ($matches) { $match = array_shift($matches); return hex2bin(substr($match, 1)); }, $string );}$result = ldap_unescape("uid=\\61\\6c\\70\\68\\6f\\6e\\7a\\6f,ou=people,dc=foo,dc=com"); // uid=alphonzo,ou=people,dc=foo,dc=com?>