Question

Just a short question, will these two lines always give the same result, considering, that an XML request or response is given?

str_replace( array( "\n", "\t", "\r", "\r\n" ), '', trim( $xml ) );

preg_replace( '#>\s+<#', '><', $xml );

If no, how can I make a preg_replace like that?

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

The preg_replace is more constrained than the str_replace (it only matches whitespace outside angle brackets) and \s includes the space character. Additionally, a string like <blah> \r \n \t TEXT \t\t</blah> would not be replaced, instead the whitespace would be kept.

In fact, the two are nothing alike asides from both affecting whitespace in some way.

The equivalent preg_replace to your str_replace would just be ('/[\r\n\t]/','',$xml)