Simplifying a function.

[haku]

I need to strip the space from the text inside an anchor tag, and replace it with a <br /> tag. I am using this code right now:

 

$link = '<a href="this/is.html">This is a link</a>';
$text = strip_tags($link);

$converted_text = str_replace(' ','<br />',$text);
echo str_replace($text,$converted_text,$link);

 

It works just fine. But I'm thinking there should be a way to simplify it into using one function using regex, or maybe some other way. But I'm crap at regex and I can't think of another way.

 

Anybody want to take a stab as simplifying it?

[.josh]

<?php
   $link = '<a href="this/is.html">This is a link</a>';
   $link = preg_replace("/(?<!<a)\s/","<br />",$link);
   echo $link;
?>

 

edit:

 

regex uses a negative look behind to match and replace any space that is not preceded by a '<a'

[haku]

Nice, thanks. That's exactly what I was looking for. Nice little regex - I'm going to spend a bit of time looking at how it works.

 

Regex is something I've been trying to pick up for a while, but I'm still not very good at it.