to remove the ASCII control characters (except "line feed" and "tab") :
$tab_chr = array() ;
for($control = 0; $control < 32; $control++) {
if ($control != 9 && $control != 10) {
$tab_chr[]= chr($control) ;
}
}
$tab_chr[]= chr(127) ;
$string = str_replace($tab_chr, '', $string);