excluding parenthesis, space and dashes from phone number

hi, I store phone number in mysql as integer, e.g. (123) 456-7890 is stored as 1234567890. though, in search form they usually type in a phone number with parenthesis/space/dashes. I have to extract numbers before I search through mysql. currently, I use eregi_replace() function, several times, to do the job: eregi_replace(' ', '', $phone); eregi_replace('(', '', $phone); eregi_replace(')', '', $phone); eregi_replace('-', '', $phone); and it works fine. but, is there any better way? more "fancy"? :) thanks for any help. -afan