How to strip unicode chars (LEFT_TO_RIGHT_MARK) from a string in php

Question

I'm trying to remove LEFT-TO-RIGHT-MARK (\u200e) and RIGHT-TO-LEFT-MARK (\u200f) from a string before encoding it as JSON. Neither of the following seems to work:

$s = mb_ereg_replace("\u200e", '', $s);
$s = preg_replace("#\u200e#u", '', $s);
$s = preg_replace("#\u200e#", '', $s);

Any help is appreciated!

Which encoding is the string in? – troelskn Dec 18 '09 at 19:59 — troelskn, Dec 18 '09 at 19:59

score 14 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 10 '13 at 02:48

14

After wrestling with this issue for a couple of days, I finally have found the answer!

$str = preg_replace('/(\x{200e}|\x{200f})/u', '', $str);

answered Sep 10 '13 at 02:48

Tim Groeneveld

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worked for me where @tmont's answer (With higher votes) didn't – roryok Jun 13 '16 at 13:39

tmont · Answer 2 · 2010-01-05T04:49:38.733

7

Your Unicode escaping is wrong, this should work:

preg_replace('/\x20(\x0e|\x0f)/', '', $string)

Test:

<?php
  $string = chr(0x20) . chr(0x0e) . 'fo' . chr(0x20) . chr(0x0e) . 'o' . chr(0x20) . chr(0x0f);
  echo $string . "\n";
  echo preg_replace('/\x20(\x0e|\x0f)/', '', $string);
?>

Or, use str_replace():

  str_replace(array("\x20\x0e", "\x20\x0f"), '', $string);

edited Jan 05 '10 at 04:49

answered Jan 05 '10 at 03:53

tmont

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actually, it does work. my test was ill conceived. updated answer to include str_replace(). could probably use strtr() as well. – tmont Jan 05 '10 at 04:50
What exactly is \x0e? – iankit Jan 24 '14 at 15:35
@iankit `\x0e` is the regex equivalent of `chr(0x20)` – tmont Feb 27 '14 at 05:31

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 04 '12 at 10:24

0

try this

preg_replace('/\x{E2}\x{80}\x{8E}/', '', $s); 
// strip unicode chars (LEFT_TO_RIGHT_MARK)

edited Oct 04 '12 at 10:24

fancyPants

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answered Oct 04 '12 at 09:21

Shadi Abu Hilal

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 18 '09 at 18:52

0

Have you tried encoding your script file in UTF-8, and actually typing (or copy+pasting) the characters in there?

answered Dec 18 '09 at 18:52

Pekka

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 18 '09 at 19:06

What about using str_replace, and coding that character using it's character codes ; something like this, maybe :

$new_string = str_replace("\x20\x0f", "", $your_string);

And, in your case, as you have several different characters to replace, you might replace them all in one call to str_replace :

$new_string = str_replace(
    array(
        "\x20\x0e", 
        "\x20\x0f", 
    ),
    array(
        "", 
        "", 
    ),
    $your_string
);

Does it work for your problem ?

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 05 '10 at 04:24

0

Could you try this? its utf8 encoding of 200e and 200f

$s=preg_replace('/\xe2\x80[\x8e\x8f]/', '', $s)

or with str_replace

$s=str_replace("\xe2\x80\x8e", "", $s);
$s=str_replace("\xe2\x80\x8f", "", $s);

answered Jan 05 '10 at 04:24

YOU

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How to strip unicode chars (LEFT_TO_RIGHT_MARK) from a string in php

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