PHP: remove extra space from a string using regex

Question

How do I remove extra spaces at the end of a string using regex (preg_replace)?

$string = "some random text with extra spaces at the end      ";

Answer 1

There is no need of regex here and you can use rtrim for it, its cleaner and faster:

$str = rtrim($str);

But if you want a regex based solution you can use:

$str = preg_replace('/\s*$/','',$str);

The regex used is /\s*$/

• \s is short for any white space char, which includes space.
• * is the quantifier for zero or more
• $ is the end anchor

Basically we replace trailing whitespace characters with nothing (''), effectively deleting them.

Answer 2

You don't really need regex here, you can use the rtrim() function.

$string = "some random text with extra spaces at the end      ";
$string = rtrim($string);

Code on ideone

---

See also :

• trim()
• ltrim()