I have this input string: '- - Adele Gislan - Web Developer - - - '
and the expected output is this string: Adele Gislan - Web Developer
I use this regular expression
$urli='- - Adele Gislan - Web Developer - - - ';
$urli = preg_replace("/\-[[:space:]]+$/","",$urli);
$urli = preg_replace("/\-+$/","",$urli);
But this remove special character "-" or "- " only one time.
I try this
$urli = rtrim($urli, '-');
$urli = ltrim($urli, '-');
but isnt ideal
You need to include the space and - symbol inside a character class,
^[ -]+|[ -]+$
Just replace the matched characters with an empty string.
PHP code would be,
<?php
$mystring = "- - Adele Gislan - Web Developer - - - ";
echo preg_replace('~^[ -]+|[ -]+$~', '', $mystring);
?>
Output:
Adele Gislan - Web Developer
Explanation:
^ Asserts that we are at the start.[ -]+ Matches one or more space or - characters.| Logical OR operator which is usually used to combine two regexes.[ -]+ Matches one or more space or - characters.$ Asserts that we are at the end of the line.To get from:
- - Adele Gislan - Web Developer - - -
to
Adele Gislan - Web Developer
use:
[ -]{4,}
php-preg:
'/[ -]{4,}/m'
Alternatively you could use:
(?: *-+ *){2,}
php-preg:
'/(?: *-+ *){2,}/m'
I'd be extra-greedy and simply match word bounds:
$str = ' - - Adele Gislan - Web Developer - - -';
$str = preg_replace('/.*?(\b.+\b).*/', '$1', $str);
If you just want to trim leading and trailing dashes and spaces, there's no need to use regular expressions. You could use one call to trim:
echo trim($urli, '- ');
The second argument is a list of characters to be removed.
Output:
Adele Gislan - Web Developer
rtrim/ltrimattempt was on the right track. But you want to remove spaces and dashes in unison; sotrim($str, "- ")for both.