How do I remove linebreaks followed by a whitespace?

Question

I want to remove all line breaks followed by a whitespace or in other words; move all lines that starts with a whitespace to the end of the last line.

Example:

$str_before = "Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text
 of the printing and typesetting industry. 
Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's 
standard dummy text ever since the";

Wanted result:

$str_after = "Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. 
Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's 
standard dummy text ever since the";

I have tried this with no success:

$str_after = str_replace("\n"." "," ", $str_before)

How do I achieve this using php/regex?

If you are reading line by line, you can use trim() function. — tanjir, Jul 28 '15 at 21:37
@henninghall - all your lines starts from upper sign and end at dot? — ventaquil, Jul 28 '15 at 21:49
@tanjir Might try it but would prefer to use a regex if posible — Henning Hall, Jul 28 '15 at 21:51
@henninghall so it's be hard to create regex :( or i'm too dump :) — ventaquil, Jul 28 '15 at 21:53

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 28 '15 at 21:52

2

Not very elegant but this should work.

<?php

$str = 'Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text
 of the printing and typesetting industry. 
Lorem Ipsum has been the industry\'s 
standard dummy text ever since the';

$newStr = []; $i = 0;
foreach(preg_split("/((\r?\n)|(\r\n?))/", $str) as $line) {
  $i++;

  if ($line[0] == chr(32)) {
    $newStr[$i-1] .= $line;
  } else {
    $newStr[$i] = $line;
  }
} 
echo implode(PHP_EOL, $newStr);

answered Jul 28 '15 at 21:52

ficuscr

6,975
2
32
52

2

(Instead of the `\r` and `\n` combinations, one could often use `\R`, which [covers most linebreak variations](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18988536/php-regex-how-to-match-r-and-n-without-using-r-n).) – mario Jul 28 '15 at 22:41

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 28 '15 at 21:52

2

Use the following regex:

^([^\n]*)\n( [^\n]*)$
Demo here.

Find everything in the file that matches. Replace with the first and second capturing group concatenated together.

answered Jul 28 '15 at 21:52

James Buck

1,640
9
13

Looks good but didn't work in my case of some reason. – Henning Hall Jul 28 '15 at 22:11

How do I remove linebreaks followed by a whitespace?

2 Answers2