$re = '/[^A-Z\S\r\na-z.0-9:;$-]+/';
$str = 'This is a test.
This is a newline.
this is another newline. This is a, comma';
$subst = " ";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php