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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-28T06:18:12+00:00

Input form on my website for comments. I have some silly users creating a

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Input form on my website for comments. I have some silly users creating a whole lot of blank whitespace by pressing enter [space] enter [space] or lots of enters etc
In PHP, how do I preserve legit single enter or double ‘enter enter’, but remove any other combinations with spaces inbetween.
eg, This is OK:

\n\n

This is NOT:

\n\n\n...
\n\n \n...
\n \n \n...
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Finally got it working and tested. I decided to break the process in two passes of replaces to keep the regex code simple (you can combine both if you desire).

    First one (/\n | {1,} | \n/) will look for any random combination of spaces and \n characters, leaving the solo \n.

    Second one ('/(?<=\n{2})\n*/') makes use of look behind feature to match any group of \ncharacters that follows any ‘\n\n’ (double new line sequence).

    Testing:

    $string ="
Loren Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet\n
Loren Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet\n
\n
Loren Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet\n
\n
\n
Loren Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet\n
\n
\n
\n
.\n
\n
..\n
.....\n
.\n
...\n
Loren Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet";

$string = preg_replace('/\n | {1,} | \n/', '', $string);
$string = preg_replace('/(?<=\n{2})\n*/', '', $string);
echo $string;

    Output:

    Loren Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet\n
Loren Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet\n
\n
Loren Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet\n
\n
Loren Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet\n
\n
Loren Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet

    I’m not a regex guru, but I think it already solves the problem decently.

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