How to remove line breaks (no characters!) from the string?
PhpHtmlReplaceLine BreaksNl2brPhp Problem Overview
This might appear to be a dupe, but rest assured it isn't - I have searched both SO as well as the rest of the web for an answer to my problem and ended up finding the same insufficient "solutions" over and over. Anyhow, here it goes:
I'm saving user input from a textarea to a MySQL database (within a WordPress environment, but that ought not to matter to this problem, I believe). It is later retrieved from the DB to be shown to Admins in the backend of the site. The problem occurs when users submit text with line breaks (i.e. hit the Enter key).
A sample string might look like this:
Dear friends, I just wanted so Hello. How are you guys? I'm fine, thanks!
Greetings,
Bill
There are no end of line characters ("\n", "\r", or the like) in the string.
I am using nl2br()
on it to generate HTML output, but that's not enough. The result then is:
Dear friends, I just wanted so Hello. How are you guys? I'm fine, thanks!<br />
<br />
Greetings,<br />
Bill
Which, as far as I understand it, is the expected nl2br()
result, as that inserts the tags and isn't supposed to replace the line-breaks in the first place?
However the format I need would be this:
Dear friends, I just wanted so Hello. How are you guys? I'm fine, thanks!<br /><br />Greetings,<br />Bill
If the string had EOL characters such as "\n" in it, I'd hit it with either str_replace()
or preg_replace()
and be done with it, but I have no clue what needle to feed either of those functions if there ain't no characters there in the first place.
I can manually access the relevant field in the DB, hit Backspace for every linebreak and what I later on want to do with the string works. So I know I need the above format.
Php Solutions
Solution 1 - Php
Ben's solution is acceptable, but str_replace() is by far faster than preg_replace()
$buffer = str_replace(array("\r", "\n"), '', $buffer);
Using less CPU power, reduces the world carbon dioxide emissions.
Solution 2 - Php
You should be able to replace it with a preg that removes all newlines and carriage returns. The code is:
preg_replace( "/\r|\n/", "", $yourString );
Even though the \n
characters are not appearing, if you are getting carriage returns there is an invisible character there. The preg replace should grab and fix those.
Solution 3 - Php
$str = "
Dear friends, I just wanted so Hello. How are you guys? I'm fine, thanks!<br />
<br />
Greetings,<br />
Bill";
echo str_replace(array("\n", "\r"), '', $str); // echo $str in a single line
Solution 4 - Php
It's because nl2br()
doesn't remove new lines at all.
> Returns string with <br />
or <br>
inserted before all newlines (\r\n
, \n\r
, \n
and \r
).
Use str_replace
instead:
$string = str_replace(["\r\n", "\r", "\n"], "<br />", $string);
Solution 5 - Php
str_replace(PHP_EOL, null, $str);
Solution 6 - Php
Something a bit more functional (easy to use anywhere):
function strip_carriage_returns($string)
{
return str_replace(["\n\r", "\n", "\r"], '', $string);
}
Using PHP_EOL as the search replacement parameter is also a good idea! Kudos.
Solution 7 - Php
You can also use [PHP trim][1]
> This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the beginning and end of str. Without the second parameter, trim() will strip these characters: >
- " " (ASCII 32 (0x20)), an ordinary space.
- "\t" (ASCII 9 (0x09)), a tab.
- "\n" (ASCII 10 (0x0A)), a new line (line feed).
- "\r" (ASCII 13 (0x0D)), a carriage return.
- "\0" (ASCII 0 (0x00)), the NUL-byte.
- "\x0B" (ASCII 11 (0x0B)), a vertical tab.
[1]: http://php.net/manual/en/function.trim.php "trim"
Solution 8 - Php
To work properly also on Windows I'd suggest to use
$buffer = str_replace(["\r\n", "\r", "\n"], "", $buffer);
"\r\n"
- for Windows, "\r"
- for Mac and "\n"
- for Linux
Solution 9 - Php
I think my answer is too late but I got same extra line issue while using it in JS script, but it works like this
This will add <br />
and line breaks in string.
$text = nl2br($text);
This line will remove extra line.
$text = preg_replace("/\r|\n/", "", $text);
Replacing <br />
with any unwanted common symbol like this asterisk **
while inserting in DB:
$text = str_replace("<br />","**",$text );
And when I want to use it in program that time I use it replacing **
.
$text = str_replace("**","\\n",$text );
Then use $text
in program
Solution 10 - Php
I use 3 lines to do this job, so consider $s as your "stuff"...
$s=str_replace(chr(10),'',$s);
$s=str_replace(chr(13),'',$s);
$s=str_replace("\r\n"),'',$s);
- Legend:
chr(10)___a line feed
chr(13)___the return
\r\n______a new line
Solution 11 - Php
Alternative built-in: trim()
trim — Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning and end of a string
Description ¶
trim ( string $str [, string $character_mask = " \t\n\r\0\x0B" ] ) : string
This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the beginning and end of str.
Without the second parameter, trim() will strip these characters:
" " (ASCII 32 (0x20)), an ordinary space.
"\t" (ASCII 9 (0x09)), a tab.
"\n" (ASCII 10 (0x0A)), a new line (line feed).
"\r" (ASCII 13 (0x0D)), a carriage return.
"\0" (ASCII 0 (0x00)), the NUL-byte.
"\x0B" (ASCII 11 (0x0B)), a vertical tab.
It's there to remove line breaks from different kinds of text files, but does not handle html.
Solution 12 - Php
You can use preg_replace in order to replace parts of a string matching a regular expression, like:
preg_replace("/\s+/","",$string);