How would I strip out all characters from a string that does NOT contain: [a-zA-Z0-9\-\/_] ?
In other words, I'd like to specify what I DO want rather than what I don't. Thanks.
views:
57answers:
4
+5
A:
Easiest way:
preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9-\/_]/", '', $string);
Another approach would be to do a match and then implode the matched values.
Jakub Hampl
2010-05-18 01:51:14
Wouldn't that eliminate a-z, A-Z, 0-9, -, / and _ ? I don't want that. I want to KEEP those without creating a 10kb line of things I don't want.
ShiGon
2010-05-18 01:57:08
Exactly, the little `^` hat means *everything else apart from the stuff in here*.
Jakub Hampl
2010-05-18 02:05:45
WOW! I mistook that as a beginning-of-string symbol. All these years and I had no idea. Thanks so much.
ShiGon
2010-05-18 02:13:20
Well you were sort of right - it is also a beginning of string symbol. Just when used inside square brackets it gets the meaning of **not**.
Jakub Hampl
2010-05-18 02:25:45
@pax: Actually, it's the *character-class* NOT operator--and only if it's the first character after the opening `[`.
Alan Moore
2010-05-18 02:38:34
+1
A:
try the following
preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9-\/_]/", "", $string);
josnidhin
2010-05-18 01:53:41
A:
If you want to keep a "/" and "\"
preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9-\\\/_]/", '', $string);
Geek Num 88
2010-05-18 01:54:36
I'm pretty sure the backslash was only there to escape the forward-slash; now that I've added code formatting to the question, you can see there's one in front of the hyphen as well.
Alan Moore
2010-05-18 02:42:43
A:
Shortest way to do it:
echo(preg_replace('~[^\w-/]~i', '', 'H#el/-l0:0.'));
Outputs:
"Hel/-l00"
pygorex1
2010-05-18 03:04:49