Question

I want to count (within a single regular expression) all spaces at the beginning of a string.

My ideas:

$identSize = preg_match_all("/^( )[^ ]/", $line, $matches);

For example:

$example1 = " Foo"; // should return 1
$example2 = "  Bar"; // should return 2
$example3 = "   Foo bar"; // should return 3, not 4!

Any tips, how I can resolve it?

Answer 1

$identSize = strlen($line)-strlen(ltrim($line));

Or, if you want regular expression,

preg_match('/^(\s+)/',$line,$matches);
$identSize = strlen($matches[1]);