How to remove spaces from a string in php

Topic: PHP / MySQLPrev|Next

Answer: Use the PHP str_replace() Function

You can simply use the PHP str_replace() function to strip or remove all spaces inside a string.

Let's take a look at the following example to see how it actually works:

<?php
$str = 'This is a simple piece of text.';
$new_str = str_replace(' ', '', $str);
echo $new_str; // Outputs: Thisisasimplepieceoftext.
?>

The above example will however only remove spaces. If you want to remove all whitespaces including tabs, newlines, etc. you can use the preg_replace() function which perform a regular expression search and replace, as demonstrated in the following example:

<?php
$str = "This is a simple \npiece\tof text.";
$new_str = preg_replace("/\s+/", "", $str);
echo $new_str; // Outputs: Thisisasimplepieceoftext.
?>

In the above example \t represents the tab character, whereas \n represents the newline character.

To learn more about regular expression, see the tutorial on PHP regular expressions.

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• How to combine two strings in PHP
• How to convert a string to uppercase in PHP

How can I strip / remove all spaces of a string in PHP?

I have a string like $string = "this is my string";

The output should be "thisismystring"

How can I do that?

asked Jan 21, 2010 at 13:02

streetparadestreetparade

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4

Do you just mean spaces or all whitespace?

For just spaces, use str_replace:

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

For all whitespace (including tabs and line ends), use preg_replace:

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

(From here).

PaulH

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answered Jan 21, 2010 at 13:04

Mark ByersMark Byers

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11

If you want to remove all whitespace:

$str = preg_replace('/\s+/', '', $str);

See the 5th example on the preg_replace documentation. (Note I originally copied that here.)

Edit: commenters pointed out, and are correct, that str_replace is better than preg_replace if you really just want to remove the space character. The reason to use preg_replace would be to remove all whitespace (including tabs, etc.).

answered Jan 21, 2010 at 13:05

8

If you know the white space is only due to spaces, you can use:

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

But if it could be due to space, tab...you can use:

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

answered Jan 21, 2010 at 13:05

codaddictcodaddict

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1

str_replace will do the trick thusly

$new_str = str_replace(' ', '', $old_str);

answered Jan 21, 2010 at 13:05

David HeggieDavid Heggie

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1

How do I remove a space from a string?

What is whitespace in PHP?