Strip Special Characters

[mycro]

I have a mysql table that allows my admins to input data which is not really stripped of anything. They often times copy and paste word docs which put new line breaks into the database, but they are really inputted as paragraph symbols (rather than new line breaks) i believe, because of word formatting. Here's my question..

How can I strip a paragraph symbol, or any special characters from a string? I tried using htmlspecialchars ENT_QUOTES and it didn't do the job. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[maxpup979]

heh- I tend to get a little overzealous about this stuff--but this is what I use:

$string = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9!?.,:;_\s@()]/", "", $string);

[bradgrafelman]

You could also try this:

$string = preg_replace('/[^\s\x20-\x7E]/', '', $string);

Note, though, that you would be blocking "special" characters such as áéíóú, ñ, etc.

[mycro]

Ah, thank you very much.

[bradgrafelman]

So does that answer your question? If so, don't forget to mark this thread resolved.