specCharsToASCII('utf-8', $string); $string = preg_replace( '/[^\p{L}0-9' . preg_quote($spaceCharacter) . ']/u', '', $string ); $string = preg_replace( '/' . preg_quote($spaceCharacter) . '{2,}/', $spaceCharacter, $string ); $string = trim($string, $spaceCharacter); return $string; } }