Removing unwanted whitespace in sub string in php?

Question

I've Scenario where user type a string in search box. If the entered string reaches more than one word, i explode it by using,

$text = "Hello World";
$pieces = explode(' ', $text);

and i will get the first and second term by

$pieces['0'] & $pieces['1'].

But, if an user type something like,

$text = "Hello                    World";

how should i get the second term?

If i var_dump the results, i'm getting

array(12) {
  [0]=>
  string(5) "Hello"
  [1]=>
  string(0) ""
  [2]=>
  string(0) ""
  [3]=>
  string(0) ""
  [4]=>
  string(0) ""
  [5]=>
  string(0) ""
  [6]=>
  string(0) ""
  [7]=>
  string(0) ""
  [8]=>
  string(0) ""
  [9]=>
  string(0) ""
  [10]=>
  string(0) ""
  [11]=>
  string(5) "World"
}

possible duplicate of [Remove excess whitespace from within a string](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1703320/remove-excess-whitespace-from-within-a-string) — Epodax, Jul 23 '15 at 09:28

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 23 '15 at 09:28

6

Instead of explode() use preg_split() and then use \s+ (\s space, + 1 or more times) as delimiter. Like this:

$pieces = preg_split("/\s+/", $text);

answered Jul 23 '15 at 09:28

Rizier123

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how can i do the same in Jquery? is it possible using preg_split? – user3289108 Jul 23 '15 at 09:46
@user3289108 See: http://stackoverflow.com/a/650037/3933332 and just put these characters which you want in the character class (`[]`) – Rizier123 Jul 23 '15 at 09:48

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 23 '15 at 09:36

Rizier123's answer is valid enough, but if you want to avoid using preg_split which uses regular expression checking, you could get your array with the empty strings and just remove all empty elements from it like so:

$text = "Hello      World";
$pieces = array_filter(explode(' ', $text));

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 23 '15 at 09:29

0

replace multiple spaces with single space by using this

$output = preg_replace('!\s+!', ' ', $text);

then split the text

$pieces = explode(' ', $output);

answered Jul 23 '15 at 09:29

Vishnu

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score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 23 '15 at 10:30

0

Try:

<?php
$text = "Hello World";

// BONUS: remove whitespace from beginning and end of string

$text = trim($text);

// replace all whitespace with single space

$text = preg_replace('!\s+!', ' ', $text);
$pieces = explode(' ', $text);
?>

edited Jul 23 '15 at 10:30

EM-Creations

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answered Jul 23 '15 at 09:33

Ian Thompson

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Removing unwanted whitespace in sub string in php?

4 Answers4