PHP strip punctuation

Question

Let\'s say I have this:

$hello = \"Hello, is StackOverflow a helpful website!? Yes!\";

and I want to strip punctuation so it outputs as:

Answer 1

# to keep letters & numbers
$s = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9]+/i', '_', $s); # or...
$s = preg_replace('/[^a-z\d]+/i', '_', $s);

# to keep letters only
$s = preg_replace('/[^a-z]+/i', '_', $s); 

# to keep letters, numbers & underscore
$s = preg_replace('/[^\w]+/', '_', $s);

# same as third example; suggested by @tchrist; ^\w = \W
$s = preg_replace('/\W+/', '_', $s);

for string

$s = "Hello, is StackOverflow a helpful website!? Yes!";

result (for all examples) is

Hello_is_StackOverflow_a_helpful_website_Yes_

Enjoy!