Never Use $_GET Again

This is part of the reason I don't like working in PHP anymore -- this reads to me like a clear case of an overengineered solution. For example, see the list of sanitiziation filters: http://www.php.net/manual/en/filter.filters.sanitize.php

Who wants to wade through that when (for most cases) regular expressions are easily available? Not to mention the lack of any whitelisting support, which is by and far the best validation technique in a developer's toolbox.