How to remove line breaks (no characters!) from the string?

Question

This might appear to be a dupe, but rest assured it isn't - I have searched both SO as well as the rest of the web for an answer to my problem and ended up finding the same insufficient "solutions" over and over. Anyhow, here it goes:

I'm saving user input from a textarea to a MySQL database (within a WordPress environment, but that ought not to matter to this problem, I believe). It is later retrieved from the DB to be shown to Admins in the backend of the site. The problem occurs when users submit text with line breaks (i.e. hit the Enter key).

A sample string might look like this:

Dear friends, I just wanted so Hello. How are you guys? I'm fine, thanks!

Greetings,
Bill

There are no end of line characters ("\n", "\r", or the like) in the string.

I am using nl2br() on it to generate HTML output, but that's not enough. The result then is:

Dear friends, I just wanted so Hello. How are you guys? I'm fine, thanks!<br />
<br />
Greetings,<br />
Bill

Which, as far as I understand it, is the expected nl2br() result, as that inserts the tags and isn't supposed to replace the line-breaks in the first place?

However the format I need would be this:

Dear friends, I just wanted so Hello. How are you guys? I'm fine, thanks!<br /><br />Greetings,<br />Bill

If the string had EOL characters such as "\n" in it, I'd hit it with either str_replace() or preg_replace() and be done with it, but I have no clue what needle to feed either of those functions if there ain't no characters there in the first place.

I can manually access the relevant field in the DB, hit Backspace for every linebreak and what I later on want to do with the string works. So I know I need the above format.

Quixotic

If the string looks like your first example, then how can you say it has no line break characters in it? It's got at least two: two in a row after "thanks!" – Guggenheim

Fair enuff @ErnestFriedman-Hill, you're obviously right - there's "something" there, it's just neither visible not anything I know. – Quixotic

I also can't see how is it possible to have new lines without line break characters. Can you use an hex editor to inspect the string - I am sure you will find the characters for new lines... – Volney

Answer 1

You should be able to replace it with a preg that removes all newlines and carriage returns. The code is:

preg_replace( "/\r|\n/", "", $yourString );

Even though the \n characters are not appearing, if you are getting carriage returns there is an invisible character there. The preg replace should grab and fix those.

Mas

Unbelievable. I could have sworn to have tried everything along the lines of yours and @bsdnoobz answers, which both do the job. Oh well, whatever mental block I had there, both of you saved me tons of time. Turned out to be quite a daft question, I guess. Thanks guys! – Quixotic

Note that this won't match all line breaks, i.e. those created on Windows systems. To catch these, you can use the following RegEx instead /\r|\n|\r\n/ – Buroker

use \R (which represents any line ending sequence) https://mcmap.net/q/129891/-replace-multiple-newlines-tabs-and-spaces-duplicate – Contrarious

This one works for me, the most voted response do not match the break lines on my context, so, give a chance to this if you're stuck. – Surovy

Answer 2

Ben's solution is acceptable, but str_replace() is by far faster than preg_replace()

$buffer = str_replace(array("\r", "\n"), '', $buffer);

Using less CPU power, reduces the world carbon dioxide emissions.

Margoriemargot

Can't believe this answer doesn't get more cred. 100 thumbs up to this over preg_replace() – Pheasant

IMPORTANT: Use DOUBLE QUOTES around the carriage-return and newline codes. These won't get processed correctly if you use single quotes! – Treaty

This. @Treaty This is why I failed to come up with a working solution myself back in the day. I did try str_replace with both carriage returns and line feeds - but using single quotes. Was unaware of the difference two years back. Sometimes solutions are not that complicated after all... – Quixotic

Thumbs up -> "Using less CPU power, reduces the world carbon dioxide emissions." – Ingvar

@Joeri: That last one will never get called since it would be handled by the first two. It's redundant code. – Alp

$buffer = str_replace(["\r\n","\r","\n"], "", $buffer); Some OS's like \r\n – Rollo

@Rollo Considering str_replace removes all occurrences, wouldn't \r and \n both ALL be removed anyway? – Patio

If you just want to remove the line breaks, don't forget to replace with ' ', so that would be: $text =str_replace(array("\r", "\n"), ' ', $text); – Marylou

OMG, you can use an array as search parameter for str_replace! – Ayeaye

"...reduces the world carbon dioxide emissions" may have been said in humour, but if you think about it, only you can prevent forest fires. – Tabloid

This functions betters than the one in Ben's answer. – Particle

Upvoted for talking about the environment ! – Lavernalaverne

Answer 3

$str = "
Dear friends, I just wanted so Hello. How are you guys? I'm fine, thanks!<br />
<br />
Greetings,<br />
Bill";

echo str_replace(array("\n", "\r"), '', $str);  // echo $str in a single line

Unsling

Answer 4

It's because nl2br() doesn't remove new lines at all.

Returns string with <br /> or <br> inserted before all newlines (\r\n, \n\r, \n and \r).

Use str_replace instead:

$string = str_replace(["\r\n", "\r", "\n"], "<br />", $string);

Drown

Answer 5

To work properly also on Windows I'd suggest to use

$buffer = str_replace(["\r\n", "\r", "\n"], "", $buffer);

"\r\n" - for Windows, "\r" - for Mac and "\n" - for Linux

Nettles

Sorry mate, but even having been the one asking back in '12, I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is redundant. Ask yourself the following: If all \r and \n are removed in the string, why would that not be the case for those that follow each other directly? – Quixotic

Really, this obvious thing haven't came to my mind... Thanks :) I just realized that I have had troubles with it, but it was other way round, I used \r\n on Windows and it didn't work on Linux. – Nettles

Well, I am using this function to replace line breaks with commas so an address is a single line text, so replacing \r\n FIRST would help, as that means one comma rather than two for each part if that line break – Layette

@Layette Yes, you are right, I just realized the same, so we replace \r\n first, then we replace \r and \n, I've edited my answer. – Nettles

This is still redundant, if you going to remove all the \r and \r, there is no need to remove \r\n, you can user str_replace(array("\r","\n"), "", $buffer); to get the same result. – Biarritz

Answer 6

Something a bit more functional (easy to use anywhere):

function strip_carriage_returns($string)
{
    return str_replace(["\n\r", "\n", "\r"], '', $string);
}

Using PHP_EOL as the search replacement parameter is also a good idea! Kudos.

Inchoative

I think your \n\r should actually be \r\n, shouldn't it? – Quinones

Answer 7

str_replace(PHP_EOL, null, $str);

Factotum

while this may answer the question.It is advised to explain a little about your answer. – Nogood

PHP_EOL doesn't always work when you read string. It does when you write them. – Alp

Code-only answers are low value on StackOverflow because they do very little to educate the OP and future readers. – Leavetaking

WARNING: This is an unreliable answer. PHP_EOL is defined differently on different systems. Sometimes it is a line feed, and other times it is a carriage return followed by a line feed. As a result, this will fail in some circumstances, potentially creating an attack vector (for example, when creating email headers). PHP_EOL should only be used to output information and not decipher input. DO NOT USE – Brokendown

Answer 8

You can also use PHP trim

This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the beginning and end of str. Without the second parameter, trim() will strip these characters:

• " " (ASCII 32 (0x20)), an ordinary space.
• "\t" (ASCII 9 (0x09)), a tab.
• "\n" (ASCII 10 (0x0A)), a new line (line feed).
• "\r" (ASCII 13 (0x0D)), a carriage return.
• "\0" (ASCII 0 (0x00)), the NUL-byte.
• "\x0B" (ASCII 11 (0x0B)), a vertical tab.

Wheatear

This will only target newlines at the start and end of the string. Newlines in the middle of the string will be untouched. – Leavetaking

Answer 9

I think my answer is too late but I got same extra line issue while using it in JS script, but it works like this

This will add <br /> and line breaks in string.

$text = nl2br($text);

This line will remove extra line.

$text = preg_replace("/\r|\n/", "", $text);

Replacing <br /> with any unwanted common symbol like this asterisk ** while inserting in DB:

$text = str_replace("<br />","**",$text );

And when I want to use it in program that time I use it replacing **.

$text = str_replace("**","\\n",$text );

Then use $text in program

Rina

Answer 10

I use 3 lines to do this job, so consider $s as your "stuff"...

$s=str_replace(chr(10),'',$s);
$s=str_replace(chr(13),'',$s);
$s=str_replace("\r\n"),'',$s);

• Legend:

chr(10)___a line feed

chr(13)___the return

\r\n______a new line

Boil

Answer 11

Alternative built-in: trim()

trim — Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning and end of a string
Description ¶
trim ( string $str [, string $character_mask = " \t\n\r\0\x0B" ] ) : string

This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the beginning and end of str.
Without the second parameter, trim() will strip these characters:

    " " (ASCII 32 (0x20)), an ordinary space.
    "\t" (ASCII 9 (0x09)), a tab.
    "\n" (ASCII 10 (0x0A)), a new line (line feed).
    "\r" (ASCII 13 (0x0D)), a carriage return.
    "\0" (ASCII 0 (0x00)), the NUL-byte.
    "\x0B" (ASCII 11 (0x0B)), a vertical tab.

It's there to remove line breaks from different kinds of text files, but does not handle html.

Extracellular

Answer 12

You can use preg_replace in order to replace parts of a string matching a regular expression, like:

preg_replace("/\s+/","",$string);

Subantarctic

this will replace/remove all white space characters including tabs spaces. – Gummite

Answer 13

after trying literally all of these solutions.. the only thing that worked was to (urlencode - then replace - then urldecode)

$jsonDump = urlencode($jsonDump);
$jsonDump = str_replace("%5Cr","",$jsonDump);
$jsonDump = str_replace("%5Cn","",$jsonDump);
$jsonDump = urldecode($jsonDump);

Evictee