I need a regex to remove space before a specific character

Question

I need a regex to remove all space before a specific character.

Exemple:

Remove all space before the first " - "

Before:

My Beautiful Video - Hello darling - 19.10.2015 10:00

After:

MyBeautifulVideo - Hello darling - 19.10.2015 10:00

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

1

You may use (*SKIP)(*F) or capturing group.

preg_replace('~ - .*(*SKIP)(*F)| ~', '', $str);

syntax of the above regex control verb must be like,

What_I_want_to_avoid(*SKIP)(*FAIL)|What_I_want_to_match

So - .* part should match all the chars from the first space hyphen space to the last. Now the control verb (*SKIP)(*F) makes the match to fail. Now the regex after the OR operator will do matching only from the remaining string. It won't work if you use .*, .*? in the alternate branch.

source

or

preg_replace('~( - .*)| ~', '\1', $str);

DEMO

edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

Community

1
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answered Oct 19 '15 at 17:27

Avinash Raj

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I wish more RegEx answers would include an explanation of how and why they work. It is better to teach people to fish. – Eric J. Oct 19 '15 at 17:28
@EricJ. give some time to add explanations. – Avinash Raj Oct 19 '15 at 17:30
Wounderful it's work's with **preg_replace('~( - .*)| ~', '\1', $str)** – David Zeller Oct 20 '15 at 13:42

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 20 '15 at 05:11

1

\s*-.*$\K|\s

You can use \K here and replace by empty string.

Demo on regex101

$re = '/\s*-.*$\K|\s/m'; 
$str = "My Beautiful Video - Hello darling - 19.10.2015 10:00"; 
$subst = ""; 

$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);

edited Oct 20 '15 at 05:11

nhahtdh

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answered Oct 19 '15 at 17:27

vks

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The regex uses `\K`, while the demo code uses `(*SKIP)(*F)`. – nhahtdh Oct 20 '15 at 05:05

I need a regex to remove space before a specific character

Exemple:

2 Answers2