\w in PHP preg_replace covers only second byte of UTF-8 chars

Question

we have this code:

$value = preg_replace("/[^\w]/", '', $value);

where $value is in utf-8. After this transformation first byte of multibyte characters is stripped. How to make \w cover UTF-8 chars completely?

Sorry, i am not very well in PHP

Answer 1

Use [^\w]+ instead of [^\w]

You can also use \W in place of [^\w]

Answer 2

try this function instead...http://php.net/manual/en/function.mb-ereg-replace.php

Answer 3

You could try with the /u modifier:

This modifier turns on additional functionality of PCRE that is incompatible with Perl. Pattern strings are treated as UTF-8. This modifier is available from PHP 4.1.0 or greater on Unix and from PHP 4.2.3 on win32. UTF-8 validity of the pattern is checked since PHP 4.3.5.

If that won't do, try

• mb_ereg_replace - Replace regular expression with multibyte support

instead.

Answer 4

There is this nasty u modifier to pcre patterns in PHP. It states that the regex is encoded in UTF8, but I found that it treats the input as UTF8, too.