String Filtering

[alsaffar]

Hi there,

If I have a text box that the user will enter keywords to search a databse, then I want to filter his string according to the follwoing:

1. At least there is one non space character in the string.
2. No more than 1 space between the words in the string.
3. No space at the end of the string.
4. Make the string all lower case.

Lets say the string is: "I Want to be a PILOT "

How can I achieve my goal?

[xblue]

3) trim()
1) if there is anything left after trimming, the input contained non-space characters
4) strtolower() but it many situation this may not even be needed since the search would be case-insensitive anyway
2) regular expression perhaps, like
$str = preg_replace(/\s+/, ' ', $str);

[alsaffar]

thanx xblue for your help:

1. trim will remove the spaces from the begining and the end of the string.
2. $str = preg_replace(/\s+/, ' ', $str); is not working 🙁 and I dont know what does it mean? can you explain a little because it looks greek 🙂

[xblue]

sorry, was a bit in a hurry. that preg thing is a regular expression, but I forgot the quotes for the first argument
$str = preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', $str);
replaces one or more whitespace characters with a space.
www.php.net/pcre