What is the best way to escape Python strings in PHP?

subject_prefix = 'This String From User Input'
msg_footer = """This one too."""

echo "subject_prefix = '".$subject_prefix."'n";

<?php

function py_escape($input) {
    $descriptorspec = array(
        0 => array("pipe", "r"),
        1 => array("pipe", "w")
        );
    $process = proc_open(
        "python -c 'import sys; sys.stdout.write(repr(sys.stdin.read()))'",
        $descriptorspec, $pipes);
    fwrite($pipes[0], $input);
    fclose($pipes[0]);
    $chunk_size = 8192;
    $escaped = fread($pipes[1], $chunk_size);
    if (strlen($escaped) == $chunk_size) {
        // This is important for security.
        die("That string's too big.n");
    }
    proc_close($process);
    return $escaped;
}

// Example usage:
$x = "string rfull noft crappy stuff";
print py_escape($x);

function python_string_escape( $string )
    {
            $string = preg_replace( "/\\/", "\\", $string ); # \ (first to avoid string re-escaping)
            $string = preg_replace( "/n/", "\n", $string ); # n
            $string = preg_replace( "/r/", "\r", $string ); # r
            $string = preg_replace( "/t/", "\t", $string ); # t
            $string = preg_replace( "/"/", "\"", $string ); # "
            $string = preg_replace(
                            "/([x{00}-x{1F}]|[x{7F}-x{FFFF}])/ue",
                            "sprintf("\u%04X",uniord("$1"))",
                            $string );
            return $string;
    }

    function uniord($c) {
            $h = ord($c{0});
            if ($h <= 0x7F) {
                    return $h;
            } else if ($h < 0xC2) {
                    return false;
            } else if ($h <= 0xDF) {
                    return ($h & 0x1F) << 6 | (ord($c{1}) & 0x3F);
            } else if ($h <= 0xEF) {
                    return ($h & 0x0F) << 12 | (ord($c{1}) & 0x3F) << 6
                                             | (ord($c{2}) & 0x3F);
            } else if ($h <= 0xF4) {
                    return ($h & 0x0F) << 18 | (ord($c{1}) & 0x3F) << 12
                                             | (ord($c{2}) & 0x3F) << 6
                                             | (ord($c{3}) & 0x3F);
            } else {
                    return false;
            }
    }

function escape_string($text, $type) {
    // Escape backslashes for all types of strings?
    $text = str_replace('\', '\\', $text);

    switch($type) {
        case 'single':
            $text = str_replace("'", "\'", $text);
            break;
        case 'double':
            $text = str_replace('"', '\"', $text);
            break;
        // etc...
    }

    return $text;
}