Replace Multiple New Lines in One New Line

Question

I want to replace multiple Newline characters with one Newline character, multiple spaces with a single space and Insert In to database.
so far I tried this preg_replace("/\n\n+/", "\n", $text); and doesn't work !

I also do this job on the $text for formatting.

    $text = wordwrap($text,120, '<br/>', true);
    $text = nl2br($text);

You probably should take into account the different possible newline combinations, i.e. \n, \r or \r\n. It depends on the system you are running this on. — Jonathon
– Jonathon, Commented Aug 4, 2014 at 10:18
what is the difference between each combination ? I am using MAC OS. — BenjaBoy
– BenjaBoy, Commented Aug 4, 2014 at 10:21
For reference I believe Windows uses \r\n, Linux and Unix like systems tend to use \n and Mac OS tends to go for \r. You should really write your code to take into account all cases though. You should try to aim for platform independence where possible. — Jonathon
– Jonathon, Commented Aug 4, 2014 at 11:44

hjpotter92 · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-04 10:24:44Z

14

Try using the following pattern:

/[\n\r]+/

as follows:

preg_replace( "/[\r\n]+/", "\n", $text );

answered Aug 4, 2014 at 10:24

hjpotter92

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Max · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-04 10:44:34Z

5

You probably need this:

preg_replace("/(\s)+/", "$1", $input_lines);

\s --- matches any white space character (all characters like spaces, tabs, new lines, etc)

$1 --- The first white-space char in a set. If the first is a space and the we have 3 new lines after it. We'll get only 1 space.

Alternatively you can use this:

preg_replace("/(\n)+/", "$1", $input_lines);
preg_replace("/( )+/", "$1", $input_lines);

answered Aug 4, 2014 at 10:44

Max

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Comments

iswinky · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-04 10:27:07Z

1

You need to use the correct end of line character depending on the system. PHP_EOL determines the end of line character for you.

$text = str_replace(PHP_EOL, array("\n", "\r\n", "\r"), $text);

<br /> is for HTML only

Windows uses "\r\n" for new line characters

Unix-based uses "\n"

Mac (I think) uses "\r"

answered Aug 4, 2014 at 10:27

iswinky

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AstroCB · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-15 01:53:49Z

1

Try to use following:

$text = str_replace(PHP_EOL, '', $text);

edited Aug 15, 2014 at 1:53

AstroCB

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answered Aug 4, 2014 at 10:21

Amit Merchant

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Zini · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-27 01:15:15Z

1

Considering the spaces in the last line. $text= preg_replace( "/[\r\n]+\s+/", "\r\n", $text );

answered Sep 27, 2017 at 1:15

Zini

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xav · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-05 06:07:46Z

0

try preg_replace() :

preg_replace("/[\r\n]+/", "\n", $text);

edited Aug 5, 2014 at 6:07

xav

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answered Aug 5, 2014 at 5:55

user3906355

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