How can PHP developers effectively remove specific characters or patterns from strings extracted from websites?

When extracting strings from websites, PHP developers may encounter the need to remove specific characters or patterns from the extracted data. This can be achieved using PHP's built-in string manipulation functions like `str_replace` or `preg_replace`. By using these functions, developers can easily remove unwanted characters or patterns from the extracted strings.

// Example PHP code to remove specific characters or patterns from a string extracted from a website
$extractedString = "This is an example string with unwanted characters.";
$cleanedString = str_replace("unwanted", "", $extractedString);

echo $cleanedString;