note 53613 deleted from function.preg-match by colder

Note Submitter: webmaster at m-bread dot com ---- If you want to get all 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 removeNonAN($string){ preg_match_all('/(?:([a-z]+)|.)/i', $string, $matches); return strtolower(implode('', $matches[1])); };//EoFn removeNonAN ?> It took me quite a while tocome up with this regular expression. I hope it saves someone else that time.