regex match any whitespace

Question

I want to make a replacement using regex and preg replace function  this is my code   verif     wordA  s  wordB    wordc  i    replacement    wordA wordb wordc    newvar   preg replace  verif   replacement   article- gt text     That works if only we have one whitespace between wordA and wordB  I need to match what ever the number of whitespaces between wordA  amp  wordB   example      wordA  10 or more whitespace     wordB -  wordA wordb wordc  same wordA 1 whitespace  wordB -  wordA wordb wordc

User · Answer

The reason I used a   instead of a     is because a plus is defined as one or more of the preceding element  where an asterisk is zero or more   In this case we want a delimiter that s a little more concrete  so  one or more  spaces   word Aa  s word Bb  s word Cc    will match   wordA wordB     wordC worda wordb wordc wordA   wordb   wordC   The words  in this expression  will have to be specific  and also in order  a  b  then c

User · Answer

Your regex should work  as-is   Assuming that it is doing what you want it to    wordA  s  wordB    wordc    This means match wordA followed by 0 or more spaces followed by wordB  but do not match if followed by wordc  Note the single space between    and wordc which means that wordA wordB wordc will not match  but wordA wordB    wordc will   Here are some example matches and the associated replacement output      Note that all matches are replaced no matter how many spaces  There are a couple of other points  -       wordc  is a negative lookahead  so you wont match lines wordA wordB wordc which is assume is intended  and is why the last line is not matched   Currently you are relying on the space after    to match the whitespace  You may want to be more precise and use     swordc   If you want to match against more than one space before wordc you can use     s wordc  for 0 or more spaces or     s  wordc  for 1 or more spaces depending on what your intention is   Of course  if you do want to match lines with wordc after wordB then you shouldn t use a negative lookahead    will match 0 or more spaces so it will match wordAwordB  You may want to consider   if you want at least one space     s   - the brackets indicate a capturing group  Are you capturing the whitespace to a group for a reason  If not you could just remove the brackets  i e  just use  s     Update based on comment          Hello the problem is not the expression but the HTML out put  nbsp  that are not considered as whitespace  it s a Joomla website       Preserving your original regex you can use   wordA     s  amp nbsp    wordB       s  amp nbsp  wordc    The only difference is that not the regex matches whitespace OR  amp nbsp   I replaced wordc with  swordc since that is more explicit  Note as I have already pointed out that the negative lookahead    will not match when wordB is followed by a single whitespace and wordc  If you want to match multiple whitespaces then see my comments above  I also preserved the capture group around the whitespace  if you don t want this then remove the brackets as already described above    Example matches

[php] regex match any whitespace

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