note 53612 deleted from function.preg-match-all by colder

Note Submitter: webmaster at swirldrop dot com ---- If you want to get al the text characters from a string, possibly entered by a user, and filter out all the non alpha-numeric characters (perhaps to make an ID to enter user-submitted details into a database record), then you can use the function below. It returns a string of only the alpha-numeric characters from the input string (all in lower case), with all other chracters removed: <?php function getText($string){ preg_match_all('/(?:([a-z]+)|.)/i', $string, $matches); return strtolower(implode('', $matches[1])); };//EoFn getText ?> It took me quite a while tocome up with this regular expression. I hope it saves someone else that time.