Stripping non alphanumerical/space characters

[waynew]

How would I go about stripping everything that isn't alphanumeric OR a space? I'm creating URLs and I need the alphanumeric characters and the space characters to stay in place, while everything else gets stripped out. I need the space characters because I'll be turning them into - for a better SEO impact.

[waynew]

For example, I have this:

 

$new_string = ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "", $string_to_be_stripped );

 

But how would I go about allowing spaces?

[PFMaBiSmAd]

Just a side note, but the ereg functions are depreciated and as of php5.3 they are not include in the main php core by default. You should be using the preg_ functions.

[.josh]

$new_string = preg_replace('~[^a-z0-9\s]~i', '', $string_to_be_stripped);