Too much white space! Help to get rid of it?

brianb

Hello,

Some of my data in my database contains too much white space or \n tags.

Basically certains items look like this:

"This is one line

This is the second line."

What I want to do do is convert anything that has MORE THAN 3 newline breaks into 2 newline breaks like so:

"This is one line

This is the second line"

Can anyone tell me the easiest way to do this? Any coding examples are appreciated!

Thanks.

tbach2

check out ereg_replace or preg_replace

benkillin

or trim()

ForgotMyPass

Im also trying this. Can someone tell me why this isnt working?

$body=ereg_replace("\n
\n
\n","\n\n",$body);
$body=ereg_replace("\n
\n 
\n","\n\n",$body);

brianb

Let me know if you find the answer!!! That's basically what I was trying and that code isn't working!

Thanks!

laserlight

This should work, assuming the newline sequence is the newline character:

$str = preg_replace("/\n{3,}/", "\n\n", $str);

superwormy

while (strstr ("\n\n\n", $code)) {
$code = str_replace ("\n\n\n", "\n\n", $code);
}

Might be faster than regular expression...

tbach2

Don't forget, if the text comes from a windows machine, the will be \r's in with it!

benkillin

All right, here is how to really do it:

$message = trim($message); //trim
$message = ereg_replace("([ ]{2})", "\\1", $message); //get rid of excess spaces
$message = ereg_replace("([\n]{2})", "\\1", $message);

laserlight

hmm... did you test that out, benkillin?

I tested a simplified version:

<?php
$str = "HelloaaaaaWorld!";

$str = ereg_replace("([a]{2})", "\1", $str);
echo $str;
?>

and interestingly a hex dump of the result:

48 65 6C 6C 6F 01 01 61 57 6F 72 6C 64 21

which means that there are two mysterious 0x01 characters, and only 1 'a' character remained.
Doesnt seem to work then.

I thought superwormy's code would work, but for some reason it isnt.

neb010101

I dunno if this is a jump from where you want to be, but using BBEdit or Pagespinner will kill those gremlins.

The only problem: it's manual. Unless you're on a Mac and using Applescript...