preg_replace regular expression issue

Question

I'm trying to clean up a string.

I need to only allow

1. Uppercase/lower letters
2. numbers
3. spaces, tabs, carriage returns
4. these characters: _-+*()[]!#?.,;:'"<>

Everything else needs to go bye-bye. How do I go about this? I have this, which works for the upper/lower case letters, numbers, and spaces. But I dont know how to account for the tabs, carriage returns, or how to do the special characters?

$str = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9 ]/i', '', $str);

Answer 1

Try

$str = preg_replace('/[^\w\r\n\t+*()[\]!#?.\,;:\'"<> -]/', '', $str);