[SOLVED] Replacing excess spaces with

[lifeson2112]

hello, I am writing a blog program and I would like to keep intact the spaces that the author includes, but I don't want to replace every space with an entity. pretend the hyphens are space characters and the plus signs are entities; Here's what I want to do:

 

- = -

-- = -+

---- = -+++

 

I tried preg_replace("/[\s](\s){1,}/"," ") ,but that doesn't work. I need something that will exclude the first space. Any tips?

 

[effigy]

To condense multiple spaces into one use /\s+/.

To ignore the first, try /(?<=\s)\s+/.

[Rithiur]

effigy's regex is mostly correct, except for the + quantifier, since you are looking to maintain the original amount of spaces and not remove all the extra after two. So this would probably work for you:

 

$string = preg_replace('/(?<=\s)\s/', '&nbsp;', $string);

[lifeson2112]

Thanks so much for the help with this. I am not well versed in regex yet and this saved me