php regex remove digits

Question

I need a regex to remove the digits from a string but not also the spaces. I currently have

$city_location = 'UK,0113|Leeds new york';
$sip_city = '0113Leeds new york';
 $city = preg_replace('/[^a-z]/i', '', $sip_city);

It removes the digits but also the spaces so I need a regex which won't remove the spaces.

Answer 1

Use \\d if you want to remove all digits

$city = preg_replace('/\d/', '', $sip_city);

Or [^az\\s] if you want to replace all except alphabets and whitespaces

$city = preg_replace('/[^a-z\s]/i', '', $sip_city);

Answer 2

use

$city = preg_replace('/[0-9]/', '', $sip_city);

in your code the regex engine doesnt match anything that is not in the alphabet that is AZ and az . so spaces are not in the alphabet and they get matched. i dont have much experience with regex but one thing which i have understood is that

it is better to tell the regex engine what u want rather than telling what u dont want