newline and return issues in string

I have come across an issue with my string that I would like to find a faster way to resolve. It seems there are new lines and returns at different positions of the string. First I exploded on the new line explode(“\n”, $ string) This gave me a nice array but when I try to implode I get the new lines again. There is not a consistent position and there seems to be some hidden returns in the array as well. Is there a way, or has someone written a filter that would allow me to remove all the newlines and returns from the array or string. Understand I have resolved this issue but I think I have to be going about this the hard way because it is just too complex . FYI $filter = array("\r\n", "\n", "\r"); str_replace($filter,’’,$string) ß this is useless in this situation I have tried and it does not change the string at all. Understand the newlines and returns do not display in the string as literals. Meaning you do not see /n or /r it is hidden.