Question

The problem I’m having is removing spaces.
I’ve tried a few different ways and none of them have removed them.
I have a drop down menu that has spaces in it so that all the times line up to be easily understood by a customer. It comes through like $str below. Main problem is that once its sent to the mysql database, it replaces the extra spaces with an A with an accent mark. The other problem is, it just doesn’t look right in the end with the extra spaces for the customer to review before submitting. I’m not clear on the function of mysql_prep but its there as well with trim before the query is ran on the database.

I tried:

$str = "  9:00 AM  to  11:00 AM"
$time = str_replace(' ', '', $str);
echo $time; // OUTPUTS "  9:00AM  to  11:00AM" // THOSE SPACES DONT NEED TO BE REMOVED


$str = "  9:00 AM  to  11:00 AM"
$time = str_replace('  ', '', $str); //NOTE THE EXTRA SPACE
echo $time; // OUTPUTS "  9:00 AM  to  11:00 AM"    


$str = "  9:00 AM  to  11:00 AM"
$time = str_replace(' ', '', $str); //EVEN TRIED THIS EVEN THOUGH THERES NO WAY
echo $time; // OUTPUTS "  9:00 AM  to  11:00 AM"

And

$str = "  9:00 AM  to  11:00 AM"
$time = preg_replace('/\s+/', '', $str);
echo $time; // OUTPUTS "???9:00 AM??to??11:00 AM"//SEEMS CLOSEST BUT THE TRIANGLE QUESTION MARKS REPLACE THE SPACES


$str = "  9:00 AM  to  11:00 AM"
$time = preg_replace('/\s\s+/', ' ', $str);
echo $time; // OUTPUTS "  9:00 AM  to  11:00 AM"

I even tried using explode and trim to do it in a round about way and even trim didn’t remove the spaces. Versions I’m using; PHP:5.3.4, MySQL:5.1.53 & Firefox:5.0.1

Answer 1

A non-breaking space is not a normal space.

str_replace("\xa0",'',$string);

Or to get all other whitespace in there:

preg_replace("/[\xa0\s]{2,}/",'',$string);

And be aware of character encoding, you seem to have some issues with that.