ereg_replace question

[Kirk Y]

I'm in need of some quick ereg_replace help. I'm trying to strip specific characters from a string, namely an asterisk and the whitespace immediately following/preceding it.

Typical string: * Forum *
I want: Forum

This is what I've got thus far:

$forum[title_clean] = ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "", $forum[title_clean]);