Pretty URLs

[dankinit]

I'm trying to convert a name like "Charley's Steak House" to "Charleys_Steak_House".

I have this code:

self.urlname = name.gsub(/\'/, '')
self.urlname = name.gsub(/\W/, '_')

What I was trying to do was remove any characters ' completely before I stuck in the underscores.

Can anybody help modify that code above to:
1. Remove any non a-z, numbers, etc completely before sticking in the underscores?
2. Remove any double/triple/etc. instances of underscores? What sometimes happens is the it turns out as NAME____blah__asdf, i'd like to shrink that down to just one underscore?

Thanks for any help, I'm still no good with regular expressions...

[forward]

1. Remove any non a-z, numbers, etc completely before sticking in the underscores?

'1. hello ($$$) world'.gsub(/[^\w ]+/, '')
=> "1 hello  world"

The ^ means match anything not between the square brackets (letters, numbers, space).





2. Remove any double/triple/etc. instances of underscores? What sometimes happens is the it turns out as NAME____blah__asdf, i'd like to shrink that down to just one underscore?

'This    is   only        a test.'.gsub(/\W+/, '_')
=> "This_is_only_a_test_"

The + means match one or more of the previous character.

[dankinit]

Hey forward,

Thanks so much for the help, I really appreciate it. Worked perfectly! With what you gave me, i was also able to figure out another one after.

Dan