PHP remove non characters from a string

ChicoMendez · 03-11-2007 07:29PM #1

hi

i need to remove all characters that are not letters or numbers from a string.
does anyone know how i would do this with regular expressions or other -
ive made some failed attempts but there must be an easy way !

thank you

daymobrew · 04-11-2007 04:22PM

See preg_replace() and PCRE syntax.

<?php
$string = 'This is a 1 12 sentence, with - dash ; semi-colon " + ( ) and other 30 chars.';
$pattern = '/[^\w\d]/';
$replacement = '';
echo preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $string);
?>

Returns:

Thisisa112sentencewithdashsemicolonandother30chars

It removes spaces too. You could add '\s' to the $pattern line to retain them.

louie · 05-11-2007 09:13AM

There is a function that I put togheter and will do just that for you:

http://www.eire-webdesign.ie/blog/2007/11/01/sanitize-input-from-forms-or-database/

ChicoMendez · 05-11-2007 11:04AM

thanks lads - they are great

one question : for your example daymobrew what do i change the pattern to if i want to allow dots '.' ?

tnx

louie · 05-11-2007 11:08AM

[php]$pattern = '/[^\w\d\.]/';
// ad a back-slashed \. like above
//same goes for few other char. like \- \_ ...
[/php]

PHP remove non characters from a string

Comments