removing characters from array after sorting in php

I am sorting data alphabetically in PHP from a text file which works perfect, but unfortunately the textfile, which is automatically populated, contains characters like #039; which I want to have removed from the endresult. tried numerous things to replace and remove characters but was not successfull. This is what I have so far :

    <?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);

$fileName = 'cache/_city.txt';
$data     = file_get_contents($fileName);

// Assuming that the file had the data in one line...

// Split the data using the delimiter
$split = explode("|", $data);

// Sort
sort($split);

// Put it all back together
$data = implode("&nbsp", $split);
$data = str_replace("&#039;" , "", $data);

echo $data;

?>

How do I remove this piece of text from $data : #039;

Sample data :

<a href="?city=Leiden">Leiden</a>|
<a href="?city=Papendrecht">Papendrecht</a>|
<a href="?city=Helmond">Helmond</a>|
<a href="?city=%26%23039%3Bs-Hertogenbosch">&amp;#039;s-Hertogenbosch</a>|
<a href="?city=Hengelo">Hengelo</a>|
<a href="?city=Marknesse">Marknesse</a>|
<a href="?city=Wanssum">Wanssum</a>|
<a href="?city=Rijswijk">Rijswijk</a>|
<a href="?city=Leunen">Leunen</a>|
<a href="?city=Genemuiden">Genemuiden</a>|

Solution

Did you try something like that:

$data = str_replace($wrongChar , "", $data);

Edit:

Can you test that even if I think you will 'clean' more than you need:

$data = file_get_contents($fileName);
$data = preg_replace('/[^A-Za-z0-9\-]/', '', $data);

Second edition:

Knowing that *_replace is working, I improved a bit my suggestion.

<?php

error_reporting(E_ALL);

// It will apply html_entity_decode serveral times on the string to convert all HTML entities
$recursive_decode = function($str, $depth = 1) use (&$recursive_decode) {
    if (!$depth) {
        return $str;
    }

    return $recursive_decode(html_entity_decode($str, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'), --$depth);
};

$fileName = 'cache/_city.txt';

// In this test, try with a depth egals to 2
$data     = $recursive_decode(file_get_contents($fileName), 2);

// Assuming that the file had the data in one line...

// Split the data using the delimiter
$split = explode('|', $data);

// Sort
sort($split);

// Put it all back together
$data = implode("&nbsp", $split);

// Because recursive_decode converted all entities, your previous "&#039" is now "'"
$data = str_replace("'" , "", $data);

echo $data;

?>