Explode to Extract Only Letters and Numbers

How can I explode a variable so that it takes out any punctuation (or anything that isn't a letter/number) and then saves the new content to a new variable.

Example:
-.Xibe.35- would return as: Xibe35

Please help!! :)

Thanks,
Xibe

You can use regular expressions.

$string="-.Xibe.35-";
$pattern='/[^a-z0-9]/i'; //find everything that is not a letter(case insensitive) and not a number.
$replacement="";
print preg_replace($pattern,$replacement,$string);

Thanks a lot for helping me out there! :)