Replace Multiple Spaces and Newlines with only one space in PHP

normalize, php, string, whitespace

Solution

I would encourage you to use `preg_replace`:

# string(45) "This is a dummy text . I need to format this."
$str = preg_replace( "/\s+/", " ", $str );

Demo: http://codepad.org/no6zs3oo

You may have noted in the `" . "` portion of the first example. Spaces that are immediately followed by punctuation should probably be removed entirely. A quick modification permits this:

$patterns = array("/\s+/", "/\s([?.!])/");
$replacer = array(" ","$1");

# string(44) "This is a dummy text. I need to format this."
$str = preg_replace( $patterns, $replacer, $str );

Demo: http://codepad.org/ZTX0CAGD

Problem

I have a string with multiple newlines. The String: ``` This is a dummy text. I need to format this. ``` Desired Output: ``` This is a dummy text. I need to format this. ``` I'm using this: ``` $replacer = array("\r\n", "\n", "\r", "\t", " "); $string = str_replace($replacer, "", $string); ``` But it is not working as desired/required. Some of the words don't have spaces between them. Actually I need to convert the string with all the words separated by single spaces.

Original source