[Resolved] stripping white space within string

[siobhan]

Hello,

I've tried a couple of techniques for stripping out white space within a string, but am having really odd results.

For instance, if I do this:

<?php

$name = 'Mobile Pet 2';
echo $name;?>
<?php
$name2 = strtr($name, " ", "");
echo $name2;
?>

It will return the string ($name2) with spaces exactly like $name.
For instance Mobile Pet 2

However if I put a character into the quotation marks, such as a y:

<?php
$name2 = strtr($name, " ", "y");
echo $name2;
?>

It will return MobileyPety2

Why on earth would this be happening?
I've also tried a function with preg_replace, same issue:

<?php
function dirify($s) {
$s = preg_replace('![^{\w\s]!','',$s);} ## remove non-word/space chars.
$s = preg_replace('!\s+!','_',$s); ## change space chars to underscores.
return $s;

}

The remove non/word space bit does nothing but the change space characters to underscore works. I just don't get it.

Thanks for your help

siobhan

[tsinka]

Hi,

you can use str_replace:

$name2 = str_replace(" ", "",$name);

Thomas

[ednark]

strtr works as if the $to and $from string arguments were arrays, it tries to access by character index...

it tries to find the first character of " " ( $to{0} ) which is a blank space,
and replace it with the first character of "" ( $from{0} ) which doesn't exist

try passing the second parameter as an array and see what happens

$name2 = strtr( $name, ,array(' '=>'') );

other options would be to use the str_replace function, or to just use ereg or preg functions for this... especially if you are collapsing spaces

as for your preg function : I don't see anything wrong with your logic. I can't run any code as I write this to check but perhaps php does now allow any other delimiters other than a forward slash? perhaps your ! are mucking things up for php? it's worth a try anyway

hope this helps point you in the right direction

[siobhan]

Thanks all very helpful! str_replace worked like a charm. Now will try to get my head around all the function stuff! Thanks!

[Weedpacket]

Incidentally, if $name="Mobile Pet 2", then preg_replace('![^\w\s]!','', $name) won't have any effect, because every character in $name is either a wordlike or spacelike character (yes, even the '2' is a wordlike character!).