Cleansing with preg_replace

[Randell D.]

Folks,

I have a string that *could* contain any character - I want it to call a
function that will allow me to pass the variable, and then return it cleaned
of anything except alphanumeric, dots, dashes and commas... How would I do
this? I have a feeling preg_replace is what I need to use but regular
expressions have always been over my head. I do know the syntax though
(taken from a previous posting made some weeks ago) that I've been trying to
play with - the previous post had

check to see if a forename field entry is composed only of letters
if(!preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z]+$/",$_POST["Nforename"]))
{
// invalid form entry. go back to form
}

with /^[0-9]+$/ - only digits 0 - 9 allowed

with /^[a-zA-Z\s]+$/ - letters and spaces

with /^[a-zA-Z0-9\.]$/ - letters, numbers and periods
I've been trying something like
$myString="abc'de!789()";
$myCleanedString=preg_replace("/^[a-zA-Z0-9\.]$/", "/^[a-zA-Z0-9\.]$/",
$myString);

(I thought it would search characters listed in the frist arguement and
replace them with characters in the second arguement and ignore everything
else - but I was wrong).

Can someone help me here?

Thanks!

[Randell D.]

"CC Zona" <cc****@nospam.invalid> wrote in message
news:cc**************************@netnews.attbi.co m...

In article <kY***********************@news3.calgary.shaw.ca >,
"Randell D." <yo**************************@yahoo.com> wrote:

I have a string that *could* contain any character - I want it to call a
function that will allow me to pass the variable, and then return it cleaned of anything except alphanumeric, dots, dashes and commas...
$cleaned= preg_replace("/[^a-z\d.,-]/i",'',$string);

(If you want to keep all whitespace characters too, add "\s"--no

quotes--to the class)

--
CC

Thanx