filtering metacharacters for security

[mat420]

a vulnerbility scanner i  used said to filter metacharacters in my submission form

is this enough?

thank u

<?php 

$string = "This is some text and numbers 12345 and symbols !£$%^&"; 

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

echo $new_string 

?>

[beegro]

Metacharacters are any characters that have special, interpretable meaning.  In PHP we have (\n, \r, \t, etc.) in strings that are metacharacters.  How you should filter your inputs all depends on what you want to do with those values later.  Are you simply wanting to echo them back to the browser or will you actually be doing something else with them?

[mat420]

im trying to block metacharacters due to XSS