Question

I have a string that is something like this:

$str="

<code>

  lol
      test

</code>

test";

I want to trim the text that is within the tags so that I end up with this:

$str="

<code>lol
      test</code>

test";

Is there a way that I can split this out in to a 3 array pieces and so a simple trim() on the text in the middle?

many thanks

Answer 1

This should do it. What it does is looks for a <tag> followed by any number of spaces and trims until it finds another non-space character. It then removes any number of spaces before a closing </tag>.

preg_replace(array(
    '/(<[a-zA-Z]+>)[[:space:]]*([^[:space:]])/m',
    '/[[:space:]]*(<\/[a-zA-Z]+>)/m',
), array(
    '\1\2',
    '\1',
), $str);

See it in action: http://codepad.org/Stmd32QL

Edit

This would look for only <code> tags.

preg_replace(array(
    '/(<code>)[[:space:]]*([^[:space:]])/mi',
    '/[[:space:]]*(<\/code>)/mi',
), array(
    '\1\2',
    '\1',
), $str);