Remove repeating <br/>'s?

[citricsquid]

Hi,

I have a string like so:

 

Hello<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>you!

 

And I only want it to display a single <br/> at most, so if there's

 

<br/><br/>

 

it replaces it with <br/>, or if there's

 

<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>

 

it replaces it with <br/>.

 

I tried str_replace and that didn't work

[ignace]

Did you try:

 

<?php
// content negotiation
$supportXhtml = stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT'], 'application/xhtml+xml') !== false?true:false;

$br = nl2br("\n", $supportXhtml);
$brs = str_replace($br.$br, $br, $brs);
?>

[jackpf]

$str = preg_replace('/\<br \/\>{2,}/', '<br />', $str);

 

Might work. If not, something like that.

[Daniel0]

$str = preg_replace('#(<br ?/?>){2,}#i', '', $str);

 

Should work. Jack, the quantifier in your pattern is the the closing >. You need to group it in parenthesis to have it work on multiple characters.

[kenrbnsn]

You could use a while statement:

<?php
$str = 'Hello<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>you!';
while (strpos($str,'<br/><br/>') !== false)
   $str = str_replace('<br/><br/>','<br/>',$str);
echo $str;
?>

 

Ken

[citricsquid]

Thanks for the help so far. I've been trying variations of those for ages now, including using a while loop and regex. I just realised that it's not formatted like:

 

<br/><br/><br/>

 

it's formatted like:

 

<br/>
<br/>
<br/>

 

So I'm going to see if adding in linebreaks sorts it out, that seems to be the problem :|

[citricsquid]

Still doesn't work. How strange. The HTML output looks like:

 

<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />

 

but using \S and \s doesn't help. hmmm.

[Daniel0]

Try this then:

 

$str = preg_replace('#(<br ?/?>){2,}\s*#i', '', $str);

 

\s means any whitespace character.

[citricsquid]

Try this then:

 

$str = preg_replace('#(<br ?/?>){2,}\s*#i', '', $str);

 

\s means any whitespace character.

 

Still not working. How strange :|

[jackpf]

Oh yeah, didn't notice that Daniel0. Cheers.

 

And wouldn't you have to use \n rather than \s?

[cringe]

Try this then:

 

$str = preg_replace('#(<br ?/?>){2,}\s*#i', '', $str);

\s means any whitespace character.

 

Doesn't this replace 2 or more <br/> with nothing? The requirement is to replace 2 or more with 1. So the '' needs to be '<br />' I would think.

 

[jackpf]

No, he wants one line break from any number of line breaks.

The {2,} matches 2 or more.

[Ken2k7]

citricsquid - mind posting the code you have thus far?

[cringe]

No, he wants one line break from any number of line breaks.

The {2,} matches 2 or more.

 

yes, so Hello<br /><br />World becomes HelloWorld.  It should be Hello<br />World. Therefore, the preg_replace should have a replacement value of '<br />', not ''. Correct?

[jackpf]

Yeah, that's what I originally put. I guess someone changed it while editing it.

[Daniel0]

How about this:

 

$str = <<<EOF
foo bar <br /><br/><br>

<BR>hello<br>test
EOF;

$str = preg_replace('#(<br ?/?>\s*)+#i', '<br>', $str);

echo $str;

 

That will output:

foo bar <br>hello<br>test

 

And wouldn't you have to use \n rather than \s?

No, \s means any whitespace character (line break included). If you just used \n then it wouldn't work if there were e.g. spaces or tabs in between.

[jackpf]

Nice work

 

Oh, I thought \s didn't include \n. Meh.

[Ken2k7]

"<br>" is xHTML-compliant.

[cringe]

"<br>" is xHTML-compliant.

 

It is?? I thought the XHTML syntax was "<br />" .

 

[gevans]

"<br>" is xHTML-compliant.

 

It is?? I thought the XHTML syntax was "<br />" .

 

 

You're correct. Every tag in XHTML requires a closing tag. So single open/close tags such as br or hr need to be closed themselves;

 

<br />

 

or

 

<hr />

[Ken2k7]

"<br>" is xHTML-compliant.

 

It is?? I thought the XHTML syntax was "<br />" .

I meant to put a question mark. Sorry. It was intended to point out it's not.

[nrg_alpha]

Nice work

 

Oh, I thought \s didn't include \n. Meh.

 

Generally, \s could be considered the equivalent to [ \t\v\f\r\n] (for ASCII systems) Granted, PCRE doesn't support vertical tabs for instance. But yeah, \n is definitely considered part of \s. You can read about \s in more depth at pcre.org. Simply use ctrl + f to launch your browser's 'find' functionality, and enter \s and you'll quickly be brought to that section.