PHP Regex for Accented Characters

Question

I try to filter a variable allowing alphanumeric ,spaces ,accented characters , and single quotes and replace the reste by a space , so a string like :

substitué à une otage % ? vendredi 23 mars lors de l’attaque

should output :

substitué à une otage vendredi 23 mars lors de l’attaque

but I get as Result the output :

substitué à une otage vendredi 23 mars lors de l

could please help , this is my code

$whitelist = "/[^a-zA-Z0-9а-àâáçéèèêëìîíïôòóùûüÂÊÎÔúÛÄËÏÖÜÀÆæÇÉÈŒœÙñý',. ]/";

$descreption =  preg_replace($whitelist, ' ', $ds);
}else{
    $errors = self::DESCREPTION_ERROR;
    return false;
}

Depends on the encoding. /u Unicode flag usually for the regex. Also ’ and ' are different characters. — mario
– mario, Commented Jan 3, 2019 at 8:53

maio290 · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-03 08:55:24Z

3

Your regex is faulty. The part а-à gives the error Character range is out of order - I guess the - was added by mistake there...

Then a small hint: ’ is not '

[^a-zA-Z0-9àâáçéèèêëìîíïôòóùûüÂÊÎÔúÛÄËÏÖÜÀÆæÇÉÈŒœÙñý'’,. ]

should work fine.

Also, if you're working with Regex, tools like RegExr or regex101 are really a nice thing.

answered Jan 3, 2019 at 8:55

maio290

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2 Comments

findAffs Over a year ago

thanks @maio290 for your response , but a string like : masculin de deux $%#$^%$&^dbd657657657*&()*)_()+!#!@#±?/ du paysage cultuel actuel. , it removes "du paysage cultuel actuel"

maio290 Over a year ago

It doesn't here. And nor does it match on RegExr or regex101. It's not removing the ± - but that was it.

Nick · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-03 11:59:28Z

1

One way to deal with the range of accented characters is to use the POSIX [:alnum:] class, which in PHP in conjunction with the u modifier will match all of them. That can then be put into a negated character class with the other characters you want to keep to allow the other characters to be removed:

$string = 'substitué à une otage % ? vendredi 23 mars lors de l’attaque';
echo preg_replace("/[^[:alnum:]'’,.]/u", ' ', $string);

Output:

substitué à une otage vendredi 23 mars lors de l’attaque

As has been pointed out in the comments, ’ is not the same as ' and so it also needs to be added to the set of characters you want to keep.

Demo on 3v4l.org

edited Jan 3, 2019 at 11:59

answered Jan 3, 2019 at 11:25

Nick

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Comments

Gras Double · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-03 11:59:29Z

1

You may have a look at Unicode character properties.

Summary of my changes:

use \p{L} to match all letters
escape the hyphen (\-)
support typewriter (') and typographic (’) apostrophes

Here is the result:

$whitelist = '/[^\p{L}0-9\-\'’,. ]/u';

There is probably room for even further improvement. Finally, don't forget to add the u modifier!

answered Jan 3, 2019 at 11:59

Gras Double

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