preg_replace - help needed

A few of you regular expression gurus should find this easy....

Basically I have a string and I want to strip out anything thats not alphanumeric, and i want to replace any spaces with a -

So for example this string: t2es% no* *ss3aa

would become: t2es-no-ss3aa

If anyone could write the preg_replace to do that Id appreciate it!

 

<?php
function replace($str){

$string_array = str_split($str);

$count = 0;

foreach($string_array as $char){
	if(!preg_match("([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)",$char)){
		$string_array[$count]="-";
	}
	$count++;
}

$check = 0;
foreach($string_array as $checkchar){
 if($checkchar=="-"){
	if($checkchar == $string_array[$check+1]||$checkchar == $string_array[$check-1]){
		unset($string_array[$check]);
	}
	$check++;
	}else{
		$check++;
	}
}
$string = implode("",$string_array);
echo $string;
}
?>

PHP:

this works... probably a little heavy... but it works haha

 

Try this:

$newString = preg_replace('/\s/', '-', preg_replace(array('/[^a-z0-9\s]/i'), array(''), $originalString));

PHP:

 

Cool thanks! Ill try and let you know!

 

That worked a treat phper.... +rep for you!

 

The idea of using arrays is good, but rather pointless the way you do it.

I'd do it this way:

$text = preg_replace(array('~\s+~', '~[^a-z0-9-]~i'), array('-', ''), $text);

PHP:

 

nico_swd:
Thanks for the correction, nico_swd. I was initially gonna suggest the same way like you posted above, but then realised that if the original string had a dash ('-') character in it, it wouldn't be removed (while it is a non-alphanumeric character).
e.g.: "x%- g" would become "x--g" instead of "x-g"

After I updated it then I forgot to take the value out of the array


ruby:
Thanks for the rep

Regarding nico_swd's correction above, it wouldn't affect the result at all if you just keep your code like what you have now. But if you are really keen, below is a cleaner code:

$newString = preg_replace('/\s/', '-', preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9\s]/i', '', $originalString));

PHP: