remove period and spaces in a name?

[bilis_money]

I know this is basic, but anyway i'll ask it while i'm figuring it out myself the right syntax for this.

 

Let say i have a name 'george t. williams' now what i want to do is remove all white spaces and periods if any. and combine them all together and the out come should be like this --> 'georgetwilliams'.

 

any kind help?

 

thanks in advance. 

[MadTechie]

$string = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/", "", $string);