PhP regex, remove white spaces and all special characters from string [duplicate]

I have a variable $name which can sometimes contain spaces and special characters like '%' '&' etc.how can I remove all of those using regex or in any other way?

 */ public function handle() { $urls = Business::pluck('ical'); $names = Business::pluck('name'); foreach ($urls as $url) { foreach ($names as $name) { $test= explode("\n", $name); dd($test); $response = Curl::to($url) ->download('ical/'.$name.'.ics'); }