string sanitizer for filename

Question

I\'m looking for a php function that will sanitize a string and make it ready to use for a filename. Anyone know of a handy one?

( I could write one, but I\'m worri

Answer 1

Making a small adjustment to Tor Valamo's solution to fix the problem noticed by Dominic Rodger, you could use:

// Remove anything which isn't a word, whitespace, number
// or any of the following caracters -_~,;[]().
// If you don't need to handle multi-byte characters
// you can use preg_replace rather than mb_ereg_replace
// Thanks @Łukasz Rysiak!
$file = mb_ereg_replace("([^\w\s\d\-_~,;\[\]\(\).])", '', $file);
// Remove any runs of periods (thanks falstro!)
$file = mb_ereg_replace("([\.]{2,})", '', $file);