regex to strip special characters and return first three words

[lli2k5]

Hey guys,

Does any one know of a regex to strip special characters and to return the first three words?

I have deleted multiple spaces using:

$string = str_replace(' ',' ',str_replace($special,'',$string));

But, I'm not sure how to remove special characters besides doing this
$special = array('/','!','&','*'); etc..

Special characters are all characters not including letters or numbers.

Also, I'm trying to return the first three words after this operation, which should basically contain just all words, since I've already removed the spaces

[NogDog]

$search = array('/[^a-z0-9\s]/i', '/\s+/');
$replace = array('', ' ');
$newString = preg_replace($search, $replace, $string);
preg_match('/^(\w+(\s|$)){1,3}/', $newString, $matches);
echo $matches[0];

[lli2k5]

you are the man, thanks