Does html_entity_decode replaces also? If not how to replace it?
I have a situation where I am passing a string to a function. I want to convert to " " (a blank space) before passing it to function. Does html_entity_decode does it?
If not how to do it?
I am aware of str_replace but is there any other way out?
Answer
Quote from html_entity_decode() manual:
You might wonder why
trim(html_entity_decode(' '));doesn't reduce the string to an empty string, that's because the' 'entity is not ASCII code 32 (which is stripped by trim()) but ASCII code 160 (0xa0) in the default ISO 8859-1 characterset.
You can use str_replace() to replace the ascii character #160 to a space:
<?php
$a = html_entity_decode('> <');
echo 'before ' . $a . PHP_EOL;
$a = str_replace("\xA0", ' ', $a);
echo ' after ' . $a . PHP_EOL;