Question

i have found this:

$text = preg_replace('/\W+/', '-', $text);

Anyone can tell me what exactly do that? There is no information about what ‘/\W+/’ means..

Regards

Javi

Answer 1

\W means a non-alphanumeric character, so anything other than a-z, A-Z, 0-9, or underscore.

This is standard for regular expressions, nothing specific to Php.

Here’s a great tool for testing regular expressions:

http://www.gskinner.com/RegExr/

If you put \W+ in the box at the top you’ll see what kinds of things it matches.

PS: Here’s another tool that’s simpler and cleaner, though perhaps not as feature rich:

http://rubular.com/

It includes a handy quick-reference for regular expressions at the bottom.