Strip non-ascii characters

[bubblenut]

Is there a php function to strip non-ascii characters from a string? I imagine it would be a fairly common thing to need to do but I can't seem to find a function for it.

I guess I could use somthing like

$string=preg_replace('/^[^\x21-\x7e]*$/','', $string);

, but I'd have thought here was an in built function and I'm guessing if there is it'll be a fair bit quicker.

Thanks
Bubble

[freebie]

You might try doing something like
$string=preg_replace('/[^{(\037-\127)]*$/','',} $string);

For what it's worth, here's a VB function (non RegEx) to strip non ascii characters. Should be pretty easy to convert this to PHP.

Function StripNonAscii(rvntVal As Variant) As String
Dim i As Integer
Dim sTmp As String

'stubbed out to enable DBCS chars
StripNonAscii = rvntVal
Exit Function

For i = 1 To Len(rvntVal)
If Asc(Mid(rvntVal, i, 1)) < 32 Or Asc(Mid(rvntVal, i, 1)) > 126 Then
sTmp = sTmp & " "
Else
sTmp = sTmp & Mid(rvntVal, i, 1)
End If
Next

StripNonAscii = sTmp

End Function