removing new lines except in

Question

I want to remove new lines from some html (with php) except in

 tags where whitespace is obviously important.

             


        

Answer 1

Split the content up. This is easily done with...

$blocks = preg_split('/<(|\/)pre>/', $html);

Just be careful, because the $blocks elements won't contain the pre opening and closing tags. I feel that assume the HTML is valid is acceptable, and therefore you can expect the pre-blocks to be every other element in the array (1, 3, 5, ...). Easily tested with $i % 2 == 1.

Example "complete" script (modify as you need to)...

  
    
  
  
    
Title
    

      This is an article about...
    
    
      line one
      line two
      line three
    
    

      random
    
    

EOF;

//break it all apart...
$blocks = preg_split('/<(|\/)pre>/', $html);

//and put it all back together again
$html = ""; //reuse as our buffer
foreach($blocks as $i => $block)
{
  if($i % 2 == 1)
    $html .= "\n
$block
\n"; //break out 
...
 with \n's
  else 
    $html .= str_replace(array("\n", "\r"), "", $block, $c);
}

echo $html;
?>