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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-05T00:41:53+00:00

$string = Apple Foo Banana … Banana Foo Other text … Apple; I have

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$string = "Apple
Foo
Banana
...
Banana
Foo
Other text
...
Apple";

I have text where single rows are duplicated after a row “…”.

The rows before and after that can be anything (“Foo”), but also be a duplicate (without “…” like “Apple”).

The “…”-row can appear multiple times without a duplicate row after it.

I only want to remove duplicated rows which have a “…” row inbetween.

In other words: Remove the line after “…” if it’s the same as above “…”

How can I match

Banana
...
Banana

to remove the duplicated row:

Banana

so the result is

$string = "Apple
Foo
Banana
...
Foo
Other text
...
Apple";

Cheers!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If the task is to just remove the line following the line with three dots:

    echo preg_replace("/^(.+?)\r?\n(\.{3})\r?\n\\1/m", "\\1\n\\2", $string);

    The expression matches:

    • a whole line comprising at least one character (1)
    • three dots on a single line (2)
    • a whole line comprising at least one character (1)

    The /m modifier is used to select multi-line mode, in which ^ and $ carry the meaning of start and end of the line.

    The \\1 back reference is used to match whatever was before the three dots.

    The replacement '\\1' is needed to place back the matched line with three dots.

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