Question

In my bio information users sometimes input sentences without using the proper spacing, like this:

$bio = 'Hey there,I'm Tom!And I'm 25';

I use preg replace to fix the commas:

$bio = str_replace(",", ", ", $bio);

Which echo’s:

$bio = 'Hey there, I'm Tom!And I'm 25';

How do I do this for all the other punctuation signs except ‘ (from I’m) ?

Any ideas?

Answer 1

you can use preg_replace with arrays.

first create an array signs to replace like:

$signs = array('/,/', '/!/', '/?/');

than another array with the replacements

$replacement = array(', ', '! ', '? ');

now use both arrays with preg_replace:

preg_replace($signs, $replacement, $bio);

to be sure the next sign is’nt already a whitspace you could use a more complex regular expression for each character like this one:

$signs = array('/,(\S)/', '/!(\S)/', '/?(\S)/');
$replacement = array(', $1', '! $1', '? $1');

http://php.net/manual/de/function.preg-replace.php