php removing excess whitespace

Question

I'm trying to remove excess whitespace from a string like this:

hello        world

to

hello world

Anyone has any idea how to do that in PHP?

Answer 1

With a regexp :

preg_replace('/( )+/', ' ', $string);

If you also want to remove every multi-white characters, you can use \s (\s is white characters)

preg_replace('/(\s)+/', ' ', $string);

Answer 2

$str = 'Why   do I
          have  so much white   space?';

$str = preg_replace('/\s{2,}/', ' ', $str);

var_dump($str); // string(34) "Why do I have so much white space?"

See it!

You could also use the + quantifier, because it always replaces it with a . However, I find {2,} to show your intent clearer.