Replacing spaces only between words with a hyphen and remove all other spaces

Question

How is it possible to remove all spaces but have a hyphen between words, especially when there are spaces at the beginning or end of the string?

For example:

"   Cow jumped   over the moon    "

should be:

"Cow-jumped-over-the-moon"

I tried the below but I'm not sure how to get rid of the spaces without hyphens before and after the string.

$string_with_dashes = str_replace(' ','-',$string);

Does this answer your question? [php Replacing multiple spaces with a single space](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2368539/php-replacing-multiple-spaces-with-a-single-space). `preg_replace("/\s+/", "-", trim($string))` — ggorlen, Jan 04 '20 at 12:06
@ggorlen Thanks - it answers a part of the question - not exactly what I'm looking for. — jules2x, Jan 04 '20 at 12:08
Did you try the code? Looks like this produces the same output you want to me, `trim` the head and tail and `preg_replace` with `/\s+/`. — ggorlen, Jan 04 '20 at 12:11
So modify the code in the answer it to fit your needs. It does what you ask. — M. Eriksson, Jan 04 '20 at 12:11

The fourth bird · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-04T12:11:57.383

4

You could trim the $string first

$string = " Cow jumped over the moon ";
$string_with_dashes = str_replace(' ','-',trim($string));
echo $string_with_dashes;

If you want to reduce multiple spaces between the words you can match 1+ horizontal whitespaces \h+ the replace those with a hyphen.

$string_with_dashes = preg_replace("/\h+/", "-", trim($string));

edited Jan 04 '20 at 12:11

answered Jan 04 '20 at 12:07

The fourth bird

Sounds good!!! But what if there are two or three spaces withing the string. e.g. 3 spaces between `over` and `the`? – jules2x Jan 04 '20 at 12:09
1

In that case you can explode the string like: $stringArray = explode(" ", $string); /// it'll became a string. $joinedString = join("-", $stringArray); And after that implement the solution above – Fabio William Conceição Jan 04 '20 at 12:17

1 Answers1