remove NON alphanumeric characters from a string

[poe]

 

how do i remove NON alphanumeric characters from a string including spaces.

 

 

example : if i have a string like:

 

$mystring = " hEllo, my_fav-Number^is&256! ";

 

i want result to be : hEllomyfavNumberis256

 

thanks

chris

[corbin]

Regular expressions would be the easiest answer here...

 

$intput = preg_replace("/[^a-z0-9]/i", "", $input);

[BrandonE97]

Would that be a good replacement for the addslashes function if the person wanted to use it that way?

[corbin]

Well, if you're putting data into a a database, you don't exactly have to worry about anything alpha numeric....

 

So in theory if you replaced anything not alphanumeric with "", then you would be perfectly safe....

 

The only problem is, when inserted data, you wouldn't get the entire data so you would want to check against the original value and make sure the user won't get some weird error....

 

For example, if you had a login script and two users made names....

 

One could make "phpguy" and another could make "php guy" and all the sudden MySQL is pulling two rows for that name because the replace would rip the space.

[BrandonE97]

How would you use it to leave all the alphanumeric and only periods and no other symbols?

[MadTechie]

<?php
$input = preg_replace("/[^a-z0-9.]/i", "", $input);
?>

[BrandonE97]

Thanks bunches. I've hadnt really got the hang of regular expressions yet.

[MadTechie]

I'm Still learning.. 

[BrandonE97]

Is there a way to include spaces? If this uses the ASCII Table then the table has Space in it. And dashes if possible.

[MadTechie]

OK this is for

spaces, linebreaks, tabs, etc (white spaces)

letters, numbers, dots, commas, dashes

 

<?php
$input = preg_replace("/[^.\s,a-z0-9-]/im", "", $input);
?>

[BrandonE97]

Thanks bunches, this is a big help to me.