// PHP 5.4.1

// Either three or four \ can be used to match a '\'.
echo preg_match( '/\\\/', '\\' );        // 1
echo preg_match( '/\\\\/', '\\' );       // 1

// Match two backslashes `\\`.
echo preg_match( '/\\\\\\/', '\\\\' );   // Warning: No ending delimiter '/' found
echo preg_match( '/\\\\\\\/', '\\\\' );  // 1
echo preg_match( '/\\\\\\\\/', '\\\\' ); // 1

// Match one backslash using a character class.
echo preg_match( '/[\\]/', '\\' );       // 0
echo preg_match( '/[\\\]/', '\\' );      // 1  
echo preg_match( '/[\\\\]/', '\\' );     // 1

When using three backslashes to match a '\' the pattern below is interpreted as match a '\' followed by an 's'.

echo preg_match( '/\\\\s/', '\\ ' );    // 0  
echo preg_match( '/\\\\s/', '\\s' );    // 1  

When using four backslashes to match a '\' the pattern below is interpreted as match a '\' followed by a space character.

echo preg_match( '/\\\\\s/', '\\ ' );   // 1
echo preg_match( '/\\\\\s/', '\\s' );   // 0

The same applies if inside a character class.

echo preg_match( '/[\\\\s]/', ' ' );   // 0 
echo preg_match( '/[\\\\\s]/', ' ' );  // 1 

None of the above results are affected by enclosing the strings in double instead of single quotes.

Conclusions:
Whether inside or outside a bracketed character class, a literal backslash can be matched using just three backslashes '\\\' unless the next character in the pattern is also backslashed, in which case the literal backslash must be matched using four backslashes.

Recommendation:
Always use four backslashes '\\\\' in a regex pattern when seeking to match a backslash.

Escape sequences.

The backslash has a special meaning in both regexen and PHP. In both cases it is used as an escape character. For example, if you want to write a literal quote character inside a PHP string literal, this won't work:

$str = ''';

PHP would get "confused" which ' ends the string and which is part of the string. That's where \ comes in:

$str = '\'';

It escapes the special meaning of ', so instead of terminating the string literal, it is now just a normal character in the string. There are more escape sequences like \n as well.

This now means that \ is a special character with a special meaning. To escape this conundrum when you want to write a literal \, you'll have to escape literal backslashes as \\:

$str = '\\'; // string literal representing one backslash

This works the same in both PHP and regexen. If you want to write a literal backslash in a regex, you have to write /\\/. Now, since you're writing your regexen as PHP strings, you need to double escape them:

$regex = '/\\\\/';

One pair of \\ is first reduced to one \ by the PHP string escaping mechanism, so the actual regex is /\\/, which is a regex which means "one backslash".

Because there are two levels of parsing being done, once by PHP, and a second time by the regular expression engine:

1. The intended target: \
2. Well I need to put that in a string without it escaping the character after it: "\\", PHP sees \
3. Now I need to feed that into a regex: "\\\\" PHP sees \\, regex engine sees \

The function preg_quote() will remove a layer of confusion for you by escaping all regular expression metacharacters for you. eg:

$foo = preg_quote("c:\\some\\path\\or_whatever");
preg_match("/$foo/", $bar);

###edit

You seem to be thinking of this as "units of \\", which doesn't seem like an accurate depiction of what is happening. For a better example let's use a different character that is also significant in both PHP and regular expressions, $.

1. Intended target: $
2. Escaping for a PHP string: "\$", the literal string seen by PHP is $
3. Escaping for a PHP string to be interpreted as a literal $ in a regular expression:
   "\\\$", PHP sees the literal string \$, the regular expression sees the literal string $

Illustrated with different styles of braces representing different levels of escaping:

0: $     $
1: \$    [\$]
2: \\\\  [{\\}{\$}]

0: \     \
1: \\    [\\]
2: \\\\  [{\\}{\\}]

0: \\server\$c\Windows
1: [\\][\\]server[\\][\$]c[\\]Windows
2: [{\\}{\\}][{\\}{\\}]server[{\\}{\\}][{\\}{\$}]c[{\\}{\\}]Windows

Which also illustrates why dealing with Windows paths sucks butts.

There is a list of special Regex characters in the PHP documentation here: http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-quote.php

The special regular expression characters are: . \ + * ? [ ^ ] $ ( ) { } = ! < > | : -

If you have a string, you will need to escape the backslashes (and quotes) for the string literal. Or, depending on how the function builds the regex from the string, you might not need to escape slashes at all (I don't think so here).

"iframe=-*,src(match=\"/^(http:\\/\\/www\\.youtube\\.com\\/embed\\/)[^\\/\\s\\\\]+$/\")"