PHP Replace EM Dash REGEX

Question

I am trying to replace this character http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2014/index.htm with a regular dash , this is what i have yet i cant seem to get it to work?

$dataold = "9am – 5pm"; // from a ms word doc

$data = mb_ereg_replace("[\xE2 \x80 \x94]", " - ", $dataold);

print_r($data);

Answer 1

Why bother with the octal unicode format? Why not...

Replace an N-Dash

$dataold = "9am – 5pm"; // from a ms word doc
$data = mb_ereg_replace(" – ", " - ", $dataold);
print_r($data);

Replace an M-Dash

$dataold = "9am — 5pm"; // from a ms word doc
$data = mb_ereg_replace(" — ", " - ", $dataold);
print_r($data);

Your original code works fine, except the sample text string has an N-dash and you're testing for an M-dash. (And you have extra spaces in your RegEx). Try this...

$dataold = "9am — 5pm"; // from a ms word doc
$data = mb_ereg_replace("[\xE2\x80\x94]", " - ", $dataold);
print_r($data);