Ah yes, the ancient art of string escaping. What starts as a simple quote becomes an eldritch horror of backslashes after passing through bash, SQL, JSON, and whatever unholy pipeline you've constructed. By the end, your elegant "Hello World" looks like it's trying to escape the matrix: \\\"\\\\\\\"Hello\\\\\\\"\\\" . The only thing multiplying faster than those backslashes is your regret for not using prepared statements.