preg_replace not working

[spudly]

PHP version 4.4.4

 

I'm trying to get preg_replace to work but I can't figure out why it isn't.

Here's my code:

 

$vars["html"] = preg_replace("/\s+/", " ", $vars["html"]); 
echo $vars["html"];

 

Previous this this exerpt, $vars["html"] is a string filled with html code. I'm simply trying to replace all whitespace characters (tabs, spaces, newlines, etc...) with one space. The problem is that nothing happens. preg_replace is returning the original string and does not strip the whitespace.

 

help?

[Caesar]

Try...

 

<?php

  $string = htmlentities($vars['html']);
  $newstr = preg_replace('/[\s]+?[\n]?[\r]/i', ' ', $string);

?>

[Wuhtzu]

The code you have posted works for me... remember that most of the changes done by this replacement will only be visible when viewing the page's source code. When I tried your code the string I tested with contained tabs but they were displayed as spaces in firefox, only the source code showed the difference...

 

If you can't get it to work try this:

 

preg_replace("/[\s]+/", " ", $string)

[Caesar]

The regex pattern you are using only looks for spaces. You mentioned you want to also remove lines breaks etc....I tested the code I posted above...and it seemed to work fine.

[Wuhtzu]

The regex pattern you are using only looks for spaces. You mentioned you want to also remove lines breaks etc....I tested the code I posted above...and it seemed to work fine.

 

Not true The \s means whitespace including spaces, tabs and newlines/linebreakes:

 

Trimming Whitespace

 

You can easily trim unnecessary whitespace from the start and the end of a string or the lines in a text file by doing a regex search-and-replace. Search for ^[ \t]+ Analyze this regular expression with RegexBuddy and replace with nothing to delete leading whitespace (spaces and tabs). Search for [ \t]+$ Analyze this regular expression with RegexBuddy to trim trailing whitespace. Do both by combining the regular expressions into ^[ \t]+|[ \t]+$ Analyze this regular expression with RegexBuddy. Instead of [ \t] which matches a space or a tab, you can expand the character class into [ \t\r\n] if you also want to strip line breaks. Or you can use the shorthand \s instead.

 

When I tested the \s 5min ago it matched exactly what the above quote states