Stripping Out Obstinate HTML Special Characters

The strip_tags function, though adept at removing HTML tags, fails to tackle pesky HTML special characters such as   for non-breaking space or © for the copyright symbol. This can be a stumbling block in creating clean RSS feeds.

To remedy this issue, consider utilizing one of the following strategies:

• HTML Entity Decoding: Use html_entity_decode to convert the special codes back to their original characters before your string undergoes strip_tags processing.
• Regular Expression Removal: Alternately, employ the preg_replace function to target and remove these characters directly from your string. Here's a sample pattern that will accomplish the task:

$Content = preg_replace("/&#?[a-z0-9]{2,8};/i","",$Content);

Note that the above pattern includes a modification suggested by Jacco to prevent unintended replacements of genuine ampersand characters (&) in unencoded text. By specifying a character range of {2,8}, the pattern is more discriminative in targeting HTML special codes.