Trim problem

[that_tim_fella]

Hi,

I'm trying to take the data entered into a form element and write it into a text file. First I want to strip out any whitespace and especially carriage returns and newlines.

I think Trim() should handle this very easily, but I don't seem to be getting the required results in my text file. Here's my code:

// $form_var passed from form input
$form_var = trim($form_var);
$fp = fopen("edit.txt", "w");
fwrite($fp, $form_var);
fclose($fp); 

So if I write say,

This

Sucks

in the form, I get exactly the same output in the text file, whereas I want it to say - This Sucks

Why is this? Thanks.

[Helge]

Something like this maybe:

 
$form_var = str_replace("\n", " ", $form_var);
$form_var = str_replace("\n\r", " ", $form_var);
$form_var = str_replace("\r", " ", $form_var); 

I don't know if that is all the "options" though

-Helge

[that_tim_fella]

That worked nicely thanks Helge.

I'm still wondering why Trim() doesn't do it though. From the PHP reference I'm looking at it should strip " ", "\t", "\n", "\r", "\o", "\x0B" which is basically (as I understand it) the same thing str_replace() is doing.

[anode]

trim() only strips around the string.

[Helge]

trim() only removes from the beginning and the end of a string. It does not remove what's "in the middle".
I think.

-Helge

[that_tim_fella]

Ah-ha, yes, that makes perfect sense now, thanks.

[Jeff Lange]

Something like this maybe:

 
$form_var = str_replace("\n", " ", $form_var);
$form_var = str_replace("\n\r", " ", $form_var);
$form_var = str_replace("\r", " ", $form_var); 

I don't know if that is all the "options" though

-Helge

it's
\r\n not \n\r

[wogboy]

And you can even do it in one operation:

<?php

$form_var = str_replace(array("\n", "\r", "\r\n"), ' ', $form_var);

?>

[DR_LaRRY_PEpPeR]

one regular expression is probably faster than 3 str_replace()s:

<?php

$form_var = preg_replace('/\r\n?|\n/', ' ', $form_var);

?>

and also, if you did use str_replace(), you'd only need to do it twice -- for \r and for \n, not \r\n together because the other 2 would take care of that.

[Jeff Lange]

true, but you'd want to do \r\n first because that represents one Windows Linebreak, and doing it for \r and \n seperately would put 2 spaces for every windows linebreak.

[DR_LaRRY_PEpPeR]

oh, forgot about the spaces. in that case, use my preg_replace().