Text Formatting

[natalieG]

We  have some blocks of text  that  have paragraphs and then sometoimes there

are  long stretches of  blanks  between  words. How do we set up a pattern match so that it will  remove  all  the blanks after the first?, that is, if I have

10 blank spaces,  I want to  remove nine blanks.

 

Thanks,

 

Natalie

[no_one]

Something like this should work.

<?php
function str_multspace_del($str)
{
    $cnt = 0;
    do {
        $str = str_replace('  ',' ', $str, $cnt);
    } while( $cnt );
    
    return $str;
}
?>

[soycharliente]

If it's only text and spaces, this might work.

<?php
$string = "hello world            4   3     56            hi";
$explode = explode(" ", $string);
$implode = implode(" ", $explode);
echo $implode; //outputs "hello world 4 3 56 hi"
?>

 

That will just make a list of everything between the space characters (whereby deleting all of them) and then reforming the entire string so that all elements have one space between them.

[no_one]

@Charlieholder

 

Tested that before posting, mine ran faster (~194-200% faster.. 2x). Also, afterward, the modified string still contained multiple spaces.

 

Oh, if php version < 5.0.0

 

<?php
function str_multspace_del($str)
{
    $cnt = 0;
    do {
        $ls = strlen($str);
        $str = str_replace('  ', ' ', $str);
    } while( $ls != strlen($str) );
    
    return $str;
}

?>

[sasa]

try

<?php
$string = "hello 	world            4   3     56  	         


hi";
echo $string1 = preg_replace('/[\s]+/',' ',$string); //remove spaces, tabs new line  
//or
echo "<br />\n";

echo $string2 = preg_replace('/[ ]+/',' ',$string); // remove just spaces
?>

[soycharliente]

@no_one: I only offered an alternative. A simple suggestion. I didn't run any regression tests on it before I posted it. BUT, thank you for teaching me.

[no_one]

Yeah, didn't mean anything by it :S Just thought Nat would like to know before trying any of the suggestions given, in case they ran into problems.  :-\