Convert string into slug with single-hyphen delimiters only
function slug($z){
$z = strtolower($z);
$z = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9 -]+/', '', $z);
$z = str_replace(' ', '-', $z);
return trim($z, '-');
}
First strip unwanted characters
$new_string = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9\s]/", "", $string);
Then changes spaces for unserscores
$url = preg_replace('/\s/', '-', $new_string);
Finally encode it ready for use
$new_url = urlencode($url);
This will do it in a Unix shell (I just tried it on my MacOS):
$ tr -cs A-Za-z '-' < infile.txt > outfile.txt
I got the idea from a blog post on More Shell, Less Egg