How to replace multiple spaces from a string in PHP

Posted on August 29, 2008, Filled under PHP,  Bookmark it

This snippet is useful when you need to replace multiple spaces from a string. Tabs, New Lines and Carriages are also replaced.

<?php
function replace_multiple_spaces($string)
{
	// tabs, new lines and carriages are also replaced
$string = ereg_replace("[ \t\n\r]+", " ", $string);

return $string;
}

$string = "This
   is
a   dummy
text. ";

$new_string = replace_multiple_spaces($string);

// Outputs: This is a dummy text
echo $new_string;
?>

Do you wish to receive the latest updates as soon as they are posted? Get our RSS Feed or Subscribe to the Newsletter!

Get our RSS Feed!

One Reply to "How to replace multiple spaces from a string in PHP"

  1. ereg_replace is almost deprecated from PHP, better to use preg_replace instead. And even when you will change to preg_replace this code will be 5 times slower than

    while (strpos(‘ ‘, $string) !== false) $string = str_replace(‘ ‘, ‘ ‘, $string);

    So the main idea is: “When you can write your code in a couple of lines without regular expressions – do it.”

Leave a Reply


* = required fields

  (will not be published)


XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Note: If you want to post CODE Snippets, please make them postable first!
(e.g. <br /> should be converted to &lt;br /&gt;)