Question

I need to remove excess whitespaces from my players usernames in my application (more than once space between letters) and replace them with a single whitespace. I do not mind users having a single whitespace, but I need to remove multiple whitespaces next to each other. Currently I achieve it this way:

$replace_array=array('  ','   ','    ','     ','      ','       ','        ','             ','          ','           ','            ','             ','              ','               ');
$fill_array=array('','','','','','','','','','','','','','');

$user_name=str_replace($replace_array,$fill_array,trim($_POST['name']));
$user_name=preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9 ]/','',$user_name);

That seems entirely unnecessary to remove excess whitespaces. Does, perhaps, the preg_replace function already handle excess whitespaces? If not, what should I do to simplify this part of my code.

Thanks!

Answer 1

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