won't remove spaces in string

Question

I'm taking input from textarea form and put it in the long line. Input is like this:

Country: France

City: Paris

Street: Champ

Then put it in the long line:

$line = $_POST['input'];

now, I need to replace spaces and new lines with <SP> and <BR>, so I do this:

$line = str_replace(" ","&ltSP&gt",$line);
$line = str_replace("\n","&ltBR&gt",$line);

but I get this:

Country:<SP>France <BR> <BR>City:<SP>Paris <BR> <BR>Street:<SP>Champ

Now, if insted of \n I tried this:

$line = str_replace("\r","&ltBR&gt",$line);

I get similar result. If I do them both i Get similar results which obviously has some spaces in it. So Then I do this:

$line = str_replace(" ","",$line);

but it stays the same.

My whole code is:

 $line = str_replace(" ","&ltSP&gt",$line);
 $line = str_replace("\n","&ltBR&gt",$line);
 $line = str_replace(" ","",$line);
 echo $line;

How to remove spaces in this case?

Edit: I did bin2hex and found out that the space is actually carriage return \r. So this is the solution:

$line = str_replace("\r","",$line);

Why did \r behave like space in this case?

Are you sure your string is one long line, or is it really multiline? You may also be dealing with special whitespace characters, like the non-breaking space. — BoltClock, Dec 25 '11 at 19:42
try replacing ` ` with "". i.e. `$line = str_replace(" ","",$line);` — Virendra, Dec 25 '11 at 19:42
Use a hexdump of your string to really find out with which characters you're dealing, see [How can I get a hex dump of a string in PHP?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1057572/how-can-i-get-a-hex-dump-of-a-string-in-php) — hakre, Dec 25 '11 at 19:45
Try looking at the source, and make sure it's not showing ` ` instead of `' '`. If so, do a string replace on ` `. — GManz, Dec 25 '11 at 19:47
Post your original `$line` before any replacing is done because it isn't `$line = "some long line"`. You may have the ` ` character in it which is a space but won't be replaced by replacing `" "`. — MrCode, Dec 25 '11 at 19:48
Your code is correct. The problem is in the string. Can you post the actual string being parsed? — Abhi Beckert, Dec 25 '11 at 19:50
with hexdump I found out which character it is. I edit the question to be more clear and post the answer since i cannot answer. The space was caused by \r. If someone can explain why \r was manifested as space that would be good. — cikatomo, Dec 25 '11 at 23:16

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 25 '11 at 20:34

the comments will probably suffice but I thought I'd share this snippet, which given your example I had a punt at what you are trying to achieve.

<?php

// example string data
$str = "key1 value1 key2 value2 key3 value3";

// clean string 
$str = str_replace("&nbsp", " ",$str);
$str = str_replace("\n", " ", $str);
$str = str_replace("\r", " ", $str);

$arr = explode(" ", $str);
$out = "<ul>";
$cnt = 1;

foreach($arr as &$val) {
    if ($cnt++ % 2 == 0) {
        continue;
    } else {
        $out = $out . "<li>" . $val . ": " . current($arr) . "</li>";
    }
}

$out = $out . "</ul>";

echo $out;

// output source
// <ul><li>key1: value1</li><li>key2: value2</li><li>key3: value3</li></ul>

?>

won't remove spaces in string

1 Answers1