Question

I want to replace multiple newline characters with one newline character, and multiple spaces with a single space.

I tried preg_replace("/\n\n+/", "\n", $text); and failed!

I also do this job on the $text for formatting.

$text = wordwrap($text, 120, '<br/>', true);
$text = nl2br($text);

$text is a large text taken from user for BLOG, and for a better formatting I use wordwrap.

Answer 1

In theory, you regular expression does work, but the problem is that not all operating system and browsers send only \n at the end of string. Many will also send a \r.

Try:

I’ve simplified this one:

preg_replace("/(\r?\n){2,}/", "\n\n", $text);

And to address the problem of some sending \r only:

preg_replace("/[\r\n]{2,}/", "\n\n", $text);

Based on your update:

// Replace multiple (one ore more) line breaks with a single one.
$text = preg_replace("/[\r\n]+/", "\n", $text);

$text = wordwrap($text,120, '<br/>', true);
$text = nl2br($text);