Question

I’m using the PDO class but I’m triying to remove all chars except…:

function cleaner($str){
    return preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9éàêïòé\,\.\']/',' ',trim($str));
}

As you can see, it’s a simple function, but it removes all chars éàêïòé

example: cleaner(‘$#$<<>-//La souris a été mangée par le chat ‘) //returns

La souris a t mang e par le chat
(The mouse has been eaten by the cat 🙂 )

Any help will be appreciate

Answer 1

$str = '$#$<<>-//La souris a été mangée par le chat ';
$str = preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9éàêïòé\,\.\']/u',' ',trim($str));

$str = '$#$<<>-//La souris a été mangée par le chat ';
$str = preg_replace('/[^\p{L}\,\.\']/u',' ',trim($str));

Both the snippets worked for me, on PHP 5.3. The second regular expression is less restricted, and accepts all Unicode letters.