Can't remove special characters with str_replace

Question

I have a very trivial problem with str_replace.

I have a string with the En Dash character ( - ) like this:

I want to remove - the dash

Answer 1

To anyone who has tried all of the above but still having no joy then this worked for me (from a WordPress get_the_title() function)

$new_string = str_replace('–', 'or', $string);

Answer 2

Only this solution worked for me:

$string = str_replace("\x96", "-", $string);