Re: excluding parenthesis, space and dashes from phone number

afan pasalic wrote: > 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); side note: if you are doing simple string relacement (as in the code above) don't use regular expression functionality to do it, it a waste. the above code will work the same if you replace 'eregi_replace' with 'str_replace' > and it works fine. > > but, is there any better way? more "fancy"? :) see TGs example. I recommend doing some study on regexps - knowing abit about them and how to write a basic regexp is an invaluable tool. > > thanks for any help. > > -afan >