Check & remove special characters in a field?

Question

I would like to check whether a field has special characters, remove those characters and output (save) the value to another field.

I am creating a user search function that search various fields, but those fields might (or might not) have special characters in them that will return unexpected results, or no results at all. I need to be able to remove any special characters and save/output the clean value to another field, which I will then include in my search function.

Example:

Original value:

G-P's Bargain Shop

After removing special characters:

GPs Bargin Shop

Then save new value (GPs Bargain Shop) to another field

Can someone tell me how to achieve this? Or of a better solution for what Im trying to accomplish. Thanks for any help with this.

Answer 1

You could use regex to only allow alphanumeric characters.

$string = preg_replace("/[^A-Za-z0-9 ]/", '', $string);