trim more than whitespace

[multichild]

Hi,

I have a search functionality on my website, and aswel as using trim to trim white space before and after the keyword, I would also like it to trim anything else out that isnt in the alphabet.

Here is what I am using:

  $var = @$_GET['q'] ;
  $trimmed = trim($var); 

Can this be done?

[AnthonySterling]

Sure is, see preg_replace().

[multichild]

Hi OK cheers,

Got the jist of that.

Do you have anything handy that basically trims everything out other than a letter, and replaces it with nothing

[AnthonySterling]

preg_replace('~[^a-z]~i', null, $string);

[multichild]

Thank you Anthony

Cheers

[eanimator]

/**
     * Strips extra whitespace from output
     *
     * @param string $str String to sanitize
     * @return string whitespace sanitized string
     * @access public
     * @static
     */
    public static function stripWhitespace($str) {
        $r = preg_replace('/[\n\r\t]+/', '', $str);
        return preg_replace('/\s{2,}/', ' ', $r);
    } 

Above function is extracted from CI Enjoy