string filtering in postgres?

[Kenneth Tilton <kentilton@xxxxxxxxx>]

I need to normalize a column for search purposes by stripping all 
non-alphanumeric characters:

  UPDATE my-table SET id_stripped = ??? id;

I have been playing with regexp_replace( id, ????,'');

  UPDATE my-table
       SET id_stripped = regexp_replace( id, <various>,'');id;

Without much luck. Can this even be done with regex, or should I just 
write a custom sql function?

kt

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