Replace excess whitespaces and line-breaks with PHP?

Question

$string = \"My    text       has so    much   whitespace    




Plenty of    spaces  and            tabs\";

echo preg_replace(\"/\\s\\s+/\", \" \", $string);


        

Answer 1

try with:

$string = "My    text       has so    much   whitespace    




Plenty of    spaces  and            tabs";
//Remove duplicate newlines
$string = preg_replace("/[\n]*/", "\n", $string); 
//Preserves newlines while replacing the other whitspaces with single space
echo preg_replace("/[ \t]*/", " ", $string); 

Answer 2

Not sure if this will be useful nor am I absolutely positive it works like it should but it seems to be working for me.

A function that clears multiple spaces and anything else you want or don't want and produces either a single line string or a multi-line string (dependent on passed arguments/options). Can also remove or keep characters for other languages and convert newline tabs to spaces.

/** ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hope it's useful to someone. **/
// If $multiLine is null this removes spaces too. <options>'[:emoji:]' with $l = true allows only known emoji.
// <options>'[:print:]' with $l = true allows all utf8 printable chars (including emoji).
// **** TODO: If a unicode emoji or language char is used in $options while $l = false; we get an odd � symbol replacement for any non-matching char. $options char seems to get through, regardless of $l = false ? (bug (?)interesting)
function alphaNumericMagic($value, $options = '', $l = false, $multiLine = false, $tabSpaces = "    ") {
    $utf8Emojis = '';
    $patterns = [];
    $replacements = [];
    if ($l && preg_match("~(\[\:emoji\:\])~", $options)) {
        $utf8Emojis = [
            '\x{1F600}-\x{1F64F}', /* Emoticons */
            '\x{1F9D0}-\x{1F9E6}',
            '\x{1F300}-\x{1F5FF}', /* Misc Characters */ // \x{1F9D0}-\x{1F9E6}
            '\x{1F680}-\x{1F6FF}', /* Transport and Map */
            '\x{1F1E0}-\x{1F1FF}' /* Flags (iOS) */
        ];
        $utf8Emojis = implode('', $utf8Emojis);
    }
    $options = str_replace("[:emoji:]", $utf8Emojis, $options);
    if (!preg_match("~(\[\:graph\:\]|\[\:print\:\]|\[\:punct\:\]|\\\-)~", $options)) {
        $value = str_replace("-", ' ', $value);
    }
    if ($l) {
        $l = 'u';
        $options = $options . '\p{L}\p{N}\p{Pd}';
    } else { $l = ''; }
    if (preg_match("~(\[\:print\:\])~", $options)) {
        $patterns[] = "/[ ]+/m";
        $replacements[] = " ";
    }
    if ($multiLine) {
        $patterns[] = "/(?<!^)(?:[^\r\na-z0-9][\t]+)/m";
        $patterns[] = "/[ ]+(?![a-z0-9$options])|[^a-z0-9$options\s]/im$l";
        $patterns[] = "/\t/m";
        $patterns[] = "/(?<!^)$tabSpaces/m";
        $replacements[] = " ";
        $replacements[] = "";
        $replacements[] = $tabSpaces;
        $replacements[] = " ";
    } else if ($multiLine === null) {
        $patterns[] = "/[\r\n\t]+/m";
        $patterns[] = "/[^a-z0-9$options]/im$l";
        $replacements = "";
    } else {
        $patterns[] = "/[\r\n\t]+/m";
        $patterns[] = "/[ ]+(?![a-z0-9$options\t])|[^a-z0-9$options ]/im$l";
        $replacements[] = " ";
        $replacements[] = "";
    }
    echo "\n";
    print_r($patterns);
    echo "\n";
    echo $l;
    echo "\n";
    return preg_replace($patterns, $replacements, $value);
}

Example usage:

echo header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8', true);
$string = "fjl!sj\nfl _  sfjs-lkjf\r\n\tskj 婦女與環境健康 fsl \tklkj\thl jhj ⚧                                                                    

                                                        
            

Answer 3

this would COMPLETELY MINIFY the entire string (such as a large blog article) yet preserving all HTML tags in place.

$email_body = str_replace(PHP_EOL, ' ', $email_body);
    //PHP_EOL = PHP_End_Of_Line - would remove new lines too
$email_body = preg_replace('/[\r\n]+/', "\n", $email_body);
$email_body = preg_replace('/[ \t]+/', ' ', $email_body);

Answer 4

Edited the right answer. From PHP 5.2.4 or so, the following code will do:

echo preg_replace('/\v(?:[\v\h]+)/', '', $string);

Answer 5

why you are doing like this?
html displays only one space even you use more than one space...

For example:

<i>test               content 1       2 3 4            5</i>

The output willl be:
test content 1 2 3 4 5

if you need more than single space in html, you have to use  

Answer 6

Replace Multiple Newline, Tab, Space

$text = preg_replace("/[\r\n]+/", "\n", $text);
$text = preg_replace("/\s+/", ' ', $text);

Tested :)