仅删除 2 个字符串之间的空格

Question

I have a string like this: l' opp lop and I need to remove the white space between l' and o , so it has to return l'opp lop .

But I also need to handle strings with different cases like: L' opp LOP , L' Opp lop , l' Opp lop and return the correct string without the extra space between the those string, so the result has to be: L'opp LOP , L'Opp lop , l'Opp lop .

I have tried $new = str_ireplace( "l' o", "l'o", $string ); but it always returns a string that includes l'o so if the string is L'Opp lop the result is always in lower case: l'opp lop .

Is it possible to have a solution using regex because I also will need to use it to match l' a , l' i , l' u , l' e ?

Thanks

Answer 1

You can use

~\b(l)'\s+([a-z])~i

And replace with $1$2 .

See regex demo

The point is to use capturing groups with the subpatterns that you need to get back after replacement.

Regex explanation:

• \\b - starting word boundary
• (l) - match and capture into Group 1 a letter l or L (as /i case insensitive modifier is used)
• ' - a literal apostrophe
• \\s+ - 1 or more whitespaces (you may use \\h+ to limit to horizontal spaces only)
• ([az]) - match and capture into Group 2 any ASCII letter (lower- and uppercase).

In the replacement pattern, Group 1 and 2 are backreferences with $1 and $2 respectively.