Re: Strip alternating spaces in first word of paragraph

Aaron Gould wrote:

I have a series of paragraphs in which the first word contains alternating spaces. How can I strip out the spaces of only this first word, while leaving the remainder of the paragraph untouched?

This is not a solution, but something you can start off with. I haven't error checked it, and its probably not the most elegant way of doing it, but oh well : <?php $string = 'E n d l e s s insanity here!'; /* This gives us an array where the index is

     the position at which the word was detected.

     My idea is that if the spaces are a single
     digit apart, then we track them; assuming
     that the first "short" word is a two letter
     word, such as "An".

     However, this won't work for paragraphs
     that begin with An, A, etc.

*/ $letters = explode(" ",$string); foreach ($letters as $key => $letter) {

    if (strlen($letter) == 1)
    {
      //Possible letter of our first word
      $word .= $letters[$key];
    } else {
      $split_point = $key;
    }

} echo "Original : ".$string."\n";

  echo "Word     : ".$word."\n";

echo "Modified : ".$word." "; echo implode(" ",array_slice($letters,$split_point-1))."\n"; ?> Gives me : $ php -q string.php Original : E n d l e s s insanity here!

Word     : Endless

Modified : Endless insanity here!