preg_replace() ?

[pastet89]

Hello all! I need some help:
I have this string:

 $string = "a.whatever.could.stay.here.b";

I need by having just "a" and "b" to delete all the string and to have finally:

$final_string = "";

On the place of ".whatever.could.stay.here." there could stay really everithing - " ", ",", "." "?", "'", "[", "/", every letter, every number - EVERYTHING. Just the beginning "a" and the end "b" are defined and known. I know that here I can use something like

preg_replace  ( mixed $pattern  , mixed $replacement  , mixed $subject)

but I don't know how to define the $pattern part of the function and I am not absolutely sure that this function will do something here... Can you help me? 😕

[laserlight]

Perhaps:

$string = preg_replace('/a.*b/', '', $string);