Cut and Paste from Microsoft Word

[Anon]

OK, I have been trying to find a solution to this for a while and can't seem to figure it out, so perhaps someone out there has found a solution.

I have built a content management system in PHP using a MySQl database. The clients usually work in Microsoft Word to create the content, they then go to the site and cut and paste the code to forms, which then submit it to the database.

The problem is Microsoft Word makes characters like:

1)“
2)‘
3)’
4)”
5)–
6)…

OK the above are likely garbage so they should look like this:

1)"
2)'
3)'
4)"
5)-
6)...

How do I go about translating them from the garbage to the good. I have tried ereg_replace and it does not work, try it out, put the crap characters in a textarea submit it and try and ereg_replace, and it doesn't work!!!

Anyone know the solution to this?

-Chris

[daarius]

tried str_replace()? may be you dont have proper reg-exp for ereg_replace().

[Anon]

I actually tried that way, and a lot of different ways, and then thought perhaps the best option was to translate the string into something else (urlencode) and check for the symbols that way, don't know if it is the best solution, but all I could figure out:

$str=urlencode($str);
$str=ereg_replace("%93","%22",$str);
$str=ereg_replace("%94","%22",$str);
$str=ereg_replace("%91","%27",$str);
$str=ereg_replace("%92","%27",$str);
$str=ereg_replace("%96","-",$str);
$str=ereg_replace("%85","...",$str);
$str=ereg_replace("%A0","+",$str);
$str=urldecode($str);