preg_replace remove special characters

[jasonc310771]

$string = "t*e*s*t";
$pattern = "/[^A-Za-zÀ-ÿ0-9\-\_\(\)\[\]\{\} ]/"; // keep all language letters, numbers, all types of brackets, spaces, hyphen, dash fullstop
$cleanStr = preg_replace($pattern, '', $string);

echo("{" . $cleanStr . "}");

I do not understand why this is not working, apart from the pattern which I know still need correcting the code is the same as code I used ages ago.  Apart from the string.

I get this error...   Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '''' (T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING)

I am trying to remove all special characters from a string apart from all letters and accented, numbers and the usual characters allowed in a file name.

[requinix]

Make sure you're using an editor which is not inserting obnoxious characters into your code. Such as non-breaking spaces, which I see a few of in there.

[jasonc310771]

even using the original code i got from a website it still does not work, same error.  Is it the code or the pattern, both ?

Quote

$string = "t*e*s*t";
$pattern = "/[^A-Za-z0-9 ]/"; // keep all language letters, numbers, all types of brackets, spaces, hyphen, dash fullstop
//$pattern = "/[^A-Za-zÀ-ÿ0-9\-\_\(\)\[\]\{\} ]/"; // keep all language letters, numbers, all types of brackets, spaces, hyphen, dash fullstop

$cleanStr = preg_replace($pattern, '', $string);

echo("{" . $cleanStr . "}");

 

 

[requinix]

PHP doesn't see non-breaking spaces as whitespace. So it gets confused while parsing and will spit out seemingly random error messages.