Merge multiple HTML line breaks into one with PHP? Line-Breaks caused by P and BR tags

Question

First part of question: p tag

I have a string that contains text with unnecessary line breaks caused by p tags, example:

hi ev         


        

Answer 1

try using str_replace

$content = str_replace(array("<p>&nbsp;</p>\n", "&nbsp;<br />\n"), array('', ''), $content);

To use regex:

$content = preg_replace('/((<p\s*\/?>\s*)&nbsp;(<\/p\s*\/?>\s*))+/im', "<p>&nbsp;</p>\n", $content);

and for BRs

$content = preg_replace('/(&nbsp;(<br\s*\/?>\s*)|(<br\s*\/?>\s*))+/im', "<br />\n", $content);

EDIT Heres why your regex works (hopefully so you can understand it a bit :) ):

/((\\n\s*))+/im
^  ^^^ ^^  ^^^^
|  \|/ ||  ||\|
|   |  ||  || -- Flags
|   |  ||  |-- Regex End Character
|   |  ||  -- One or more of the preceeding character(s)
|   |  |-- Zero or More of the preceeding character(s)
|   |  -- String Character
|   -- Newline Character (Escaped)
-- Regex Start Character

Every regex expression must start and end with the same character. In this case, i've used the forward slash character.

The ( character indicates an expression block (to replace) The Newline character is \n. Because the backslash is used as the escape character in regex, you will need to escape it: \\n.

The string character is \s. This will search for a string. The * character means to search for 0 or more of the preceeding expression, in this case, search for zero or more strings: \s*.

The + symbols searches for ONE or more of the preceeding expresssion. In this case, the preceeding expression is (\\n\s*), so as long as that expression is found once or more, the preg_replace function will find something.

The flags I've used i and m means case *I*nsensitive, (not really needed for a newline expression), and *M*ultiline - meaning the expression can go over multiple lines of code, instead of the code needing to be on one line.