Replace multiple dashes with one dash

Question

I have a string which looks like this:

something-------another--thing
       //^^^^^^^       ^^

I want to replace the multiple dashes with a single one.

So the expected output would be:

something-another-thing
       //^       ^

I tried to use str_replace(), but I have to write the code again for every possible amount of dashes. So how can I replace any amount of dashes with a single one?

For Rizier:

Tried:

 $mystring = "something-------another--thing";
 str_replace("--", "-", $mystring);
 str_replace("---", "-", $mystring);
 str_replace("----", "-", $mystring);
 str_replace("-----", "-", $mystring);
 str_replace("------", "-", $mystring);
 str_replace("-------", "-", $mystring);
 str_replace("--------", "-", $mystring);
 str_replace("---------", "-", $mystring);
 etc...

But the string could have 10000 of lines between two words.

Answer 1

Use preg_replace to replace a pattern.

$str = preg_replace('/-+/', '-', $str);

The regular expression -+ matches any sequence of 1 or more hyphen characters.

If you don't understand regular expressions, read the tutorial at www.regular-expression.info.

Answer 2

you can use

<?php
$string="something-------another--thing";
echo $str = preg_replace('/-{2,}/','-',$string);

Output

something-another-thing