title: I have a string with "\u00a0", and I need to replace it with "" str_replace fails
body: <p>I need to clean a string that comes (copy/pasted) from various Microsoft Office suite applications (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel" rel="noreferrer">Excel</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Access" rel="noreferrer">Access</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word" rel="noreferrer">Word</a>), each with its own set of encoding.</p>
  
  <p>I'm using json_encode for debugging purposes in order to being able to see every single encoded character.</p>
  
  <p>I'm able to clean everything I found so far (\r \n) with str_replace, but with \u00a0 I have no luck.</p>
  
  <pre><code>$string = 'mail@mail.com\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0;mail@mail.com'; //this is the output from json_encode
  
  $clean = str_replace("\u00a0", "",$string);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>returns:</p>
  
  <pre><code>mail@mail.com\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0;mail@mail.com
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>That is exactly the same; it completely ignores \u00a0.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way around this? Also, I'm feeling I'm reinventing the wheel, is there a function/class that completely strips EVERY possibile char of EVERY possible encoding?</p>
  
  <p>____EDIT____</p>
  
  <p>After the first two replies I need to clarify that my example DOES work, because it's the output from json_encode, not the actual string!</p>