Translating a string from PHP to JSON

Based on my understanding of this subject, I’ve come up with the following function for translating a string from PHP to JSON, strictly conforming to the RFC4627.

function json_string($string)
{
    //http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt
    $replacements = array(
        '@[\\\\"]@'        => '\\\\$0',                        //escape backslashes and double quotes
        '@\n@'             => '\n',                            //convert new lines to their alias for readability
        '@\r@'             => '\r',                            //convert carriage returns to their alias for readability
        '@\t@'             => '\t',                            //convert tabs to their alias for readability
        '@[[:cntrl:]]@e'   => 'sprintf("\\u%04x", ord("$0"))', //escape control characters
        '@</([A-Z])@i'     => '<\/$1',                         //escape slashes that could fool browsers
    );
    $result = preg_replace(array_keys($replacements), array_values($replacements), $string);
    $result = '"' . $result . '"';
    return $result;
}

A simple test like this

$test = array(
    'a null: '.chr(0).'; a new line: '.chr(10).'; a carriage return: '.chr(13).';',
    'a js regex: /(["\'])\w+\1/',
    'a script element: <script type="test/javascript" src="http://example.com/all.js"></script>',
    'a japanese word: みず'
);

echo '<pre>';
echo 'Zend_Json_Encoder::_encodeString: ', htmlspecialchars(print_r(array_map('_encodeString', $test), true));
echo 'json_string: ', htmlspecialchars(print_r(array_map('json_string', $test), true));
echo '</pre>';

yields (in comparison to the _encodeString method of the Zend_Json_Encoder class of Zend Framework)

Zend_Json_Encoder::_encodeString: Array
(
    [0] => "a null: ; a new line: \n; a carriage return: \r;"
    [1] => "a js regex: \/([\"'])\\w+\\1\/"
    [2] => "a script element: <script type=\"test\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/example.com\/all.js\"><\/script>"
    [3] => "a japanese word: \u307f\u305a"
)
json_string: Array
(
    [0] => "a null: \u0000; a new line: \n; a carriage return: \r;"
    [1] => "a js regex: /([\"'])\\w+\\1/"
    [2] => "a script element: <script type=\"test/javascript\" src=\"http://example.com/all.js\"><\/script>"
    [3] => "a japanese word: みず"
)