php Replacing multiple spaces with a single space

php regex formatting string-formatting ereg-replace
Dani picture Dani · Mar 3, 2010 · Viewed 194.2k times · Source

I'm trying to replace multiple spaces with a single space. When I use ereg_replace, I get an error about it being deprecated.

ereg_replace("[ \t\n\r]+", " ", $string);

Is there an identical replacement for it. I need to replace multiple " " white spaces and multiple nbsp white spaces with a single white space.

Answer

cletus picture cletus · Mar 3, 2010

Use preg_replace() and instead of [ \t\n\r] use \s:

$output = preg_replace('!\s+!', ' ', $input);

From Regular Expression Basic Syntax Reference:

\d, \w and \s

Shorthand character classes matching digits, word characters (letters, digits, and underscores), and whitespace (spaces, tabs, and line breaks). Can be used inside and outside character classes.

Related questions

Remove all special characters from a string

I am facing an issue with URLs, I want to be able to convert titles that could contain anything and have them stripped of all special characters so they only have letters and numbers and of course I would like …

Read More
Matching a space in regex

I need to match a space character in a PHP regular expression. Anyone got any ideas? I mean like "gavin schulz", the space in between the two words. I am using a regular expression to make sure that I only …

Read More
Remove new lines from string and replace with one empty space

$string = " put returns between paragraphs for linebreak add 2 spaces at end "; Want to remove all new lines from string. I've this regex, it can catch all of them, the problem is I don't know with which function should I use …

Read More