thanks for that, seems I overcomplicated it far too much and wasn't using local vars properly

turns out all I needed was 
        my ($text) = @_;
        $text =~ s/[^A-Za-z0-9 -]+//g;
        return $text;

[download]
thanks very much for the help.

In reply to Re^2: Inverse regexes for input validation by chris-lon
in thread Inverse regexes for input validation by Anonymous Monk

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