Query database for names with and without punctuation

I have a site that allows a user to search through a list of movie titles. Many have punctuation such as S.W.A.T.

Unless the user types in all the periods, SWAT comes up blank. How do I tell the query to check with punctuation and to to check without punctuation?

Here is my query in simplest form:

...SELECT * FROM movie_list WHERE title LIKE '$searchtext%'...

Do I use some form of ereg_replace?

Thanks

the better approach would probably be to start looking at available mysql functions - check REPLACE() here: http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/String_functions.html

that way you can query

 ... WHERE title LIKE '$searchtext%' OR title LIKE 'REPLACE('$searchtext', '.', '')%' ...

or something like that...