And there I thought I knew Wordpress well. It now seems that update_option() auto-escapes code. If I want to save some Javascript or HTML code in an option, this behavior renders the code unusable.

I refuse to do a str_replace on the returned value to filter out every backslash. There has to be a better way.

Here's the PHP for the text box to enter some code:

$option = unserialize(get_option('option'));

<textarea name="option[box]"><?php echo $option['box']; ?></textarea>

This is what happens after submitting the form (in essence):

update_option('option', serialize($_POST));

Any ideas?