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Asked: 2026-05-29T17:24:48+00:00

Why does this preg_replace to remove HTML entities not work? // Remove all HTML

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Why does this preg_replace to remove HTML entities not work?

// Remove all HTML entities
$text = preg_replace('/&[A-Za-z0-9]+?;/',' ', $text);

I’m simply trying to replace all HTML entities like ( &###; , < , and etc. ) with spaces, but I seem to be missing something because it is not replacing them and I’m utterly confused now.

Test case

Code:

// Remove all HTML entities
$title="&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; I like cats &#9829;&#9829;&#9829;";
echo "BEFORE : ".$title."\n";
$title2 = preg_replace('/&[A-Za-z0-9]+?;/e',' ', $title);
echo "AFTER : ".$title2."\n";

Output:

BEFORE : ♥♥♥ I like cats ♥♥♥
AFTER : ♥♥♥ I like cats ♥♥♥

PHP Info:

PHP Version: 5.3.6-13 ubuntu 3.5

Regex Library: Bundled library enabled

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You’re missing #

    It should be this RegEx instead in your preg_replace call:

    /&#[a-z\d]+;/i
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