How to replace all spaces which are not actually spaces with regex in PHP

Question

I have the following string which I want to 'clean' from multiple whitespaces:

$string = "This is   a test string"; //Using utf8_decode

Not a big deal right? However, the string is not 'cleaned' after using:

$string = preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', $string);

Because, the string actually is like this:

$test = "This is a Â test string";

So, how can I fix this issue?

Thanks.

Please, I don't want to replace the Â character like str_replace('Â', '') or something

@WiktorStribiżew I'm not a unicode guy so for my info, how is `Â` a whitespace charcter? — AbraCadaver, Mar 02 '17 at 21:30
@AbraCadaver: It is not a whitespace character, it is a char that some Unicode whitespace char turned into after converting into a different encoding. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Mar 02 '17 at 21:32

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-25T06:27:42.700

2

You may use the /u UNICODE modifier:

$string = preg_replace('/\s+/u', ' ', $string);

The /u modifier enables the PCRE engine to handle strings as UTF8 strings (by turning on PCRE_UTF8 verb) and make the shorthand character classes in the pattern Unicode aware (by enabling PCRE_UCP verb)

The main point is that \s will now match all Unicode whitespace and the input string is treated as a Unicode string.

edited Sep 25 '17 at 06:27

answered Mar 02 '17 at 21:07

Wiktor Stribiżew

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Thanks so much! I was trying to fix this for hours. – Anthony Sep 02 '19 at 15:51

How to replace all spaces which are not actually spaces with regex in PHP

1 Answers1