PHP - Mysql_*

Hey all.   Obviously, the mysql_* functions are deprecated and have been for quite some time now, and will be removed soon. As of 5.5, using them should result in an E_DEPRECATED error, so it looks like we're getting closer to that happening. My question is - has anybody read or heard a reliable statement as to which future version will officially remove even legacy support for the functions? Like 5.x, 7.0, etc?   A Google search isn't returning anything official so far as I can see, and I was curious.

Hey y'all. Hopefully quick question on something  I've not come across before.   I am doing a quick and dirty update on an existing site that is using the mysql_* functions to use PDO, and I'm wondering how much of a corollary there is between the mysq_real_escape_string() function and PDO::quote() method. We had a sanitization method that returned the submitted string after running mysql_real_escape_string() on it, and I've updated it to return the string after passing it through quote(). What I'm noticing in phpMyAdmin, though, is that new records inserted using the quote() sanitize don't encode quotes or add slashes or evidence any of the things that apparently mysql_real_escape_string() used to do (I always used a different scrub method in the past so I'm really not familiar with how it works under the hood).   Is using quote() going to offer an equivalent level of protection against injection?   Hopefully I'll get the go-ahead to take the time and revamp all the queries to use prepared statements, but right now that's not in the cards. At least the old site did abstract database interaction so I'm not chasing mysql_* functions all over the site...   Any opinions and thoughts are very much welcome and thanks in advance!