Strip_tags issue / question

Hi List, I am using stip_tags to return to me just the words contained in a page from my website but what is displayed is some thing like this : --- Output Example --- hello world Why so much space ? --- End ----- So where the tags were, whitespace is inserted or kept. Is there a way to remove the whitespace so that the output is something like this? I have tried "trim()" "prg_replace()" str_replace(' ','',$contents) but none of these seem to work. --- Example of what I want --- Hello world why so much space ? --- End --- Thank you in advance for any help or pointers with this one. Dave C --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.672 / Virus Database: 434 - Release Date: 28/04/2004