How to remove line breaks (no characters!) from the string?

Ben's solution is acceptable, but str_replace() is by far faster than preg_replace()

$buffer = str_replace(array("\r", "\n"), '', $buffer);

Using less CPU power, reduces the world carbon dioxide emissions.

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You should be able to replace it with a preg that removes all newlines and carriage returns. The code is:

preg_replace( "/\r|\n/", "", $yourString );

Even though the \n characters are not appearing, if you are getting carriage returns there is an invisible character there. The preg replace should grab and fix those.

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$str = "
Dear friends, I just wanted so Hello. How are you guys? I'm fine, thanks!<br />
<br />
Greetings,<br />
Bill";

echo str_replace(array("\n", "\r"), '', $str);  // echo $str in a single line

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It's because nl2br() doesn't remove new lines at all.

Returns string with
or
inserted before all newlines (\r\n, \n\r, \n and \r).

Use str_replace instead:

$string = str_replace(["\r\n", "\r", "\n"], "<br />", $string);

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str_replace(PHP_EOL, null, $str);

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Something a bit more functional (easy to use anywhere):

function strip_carriage_returns($string)
{
    return str_replace(["\n\r", "\n", "\r"], '', $string);
}

Using PHP_EOL as the search replacement parameter is also a good idea! Kudos.

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You can also use PHP trim

This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the beginning and end of str. Without the second parameter, trim() will strip these characters: " " (ASCII 32 (0x20)), an ordinary space. "\t" (ASCII 9 (0x09)), a tab. "\n" (ASCII 10 (0x0A)), a new line (line feed). "\r" (ASCII 13 (0x0D)), a carriage return. "\0" (ASCII 0 (0x00)), the NUL-byte. "\x0B" (ASCII 11 (0x0B)), a vertical tab.

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To work properly also on Windows I'd suggest to use

$buffer = str_replace(["\r\n", "\r", "\n"], "", $buffer);

"\r\n" - for Windows, "\r" - for Mac and "\n" - for Linux

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I think my answer is too late but I got same extra line issue while using it in JS script, but it works like this

This will add <br /> and line breaks in string.

$text = nl2br($text);

This line will remove extra line.

$text = preg_replace("/\r|\n/", "", $text);

Replacing <br /> with any unwanted common symbol like this asterisk ** while inserting in DB:

$text = str_replace("<br />","**",$text );

And when I want to use it in program that time I use it replacing **.

$text = str_replace("**","\\n",$text );

Then use $text in program

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I use 3 lines to do this job, so consider $s as your "stuff"...

$s=str_replace(chr(10),'',$s);
$s=str_replace(chr(13),'',$s);
$s=str_replace("\r\n"),'',$s);

Legend:

chr(10)___a line feed

chr(13)___the return

\r\n______a new line

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Alternative built-in: trim()

trim — Strip whitespace (or other characters) from the beginning and end of a string
Description ¶
trim ( string $str [, string $character_mask = " \t\n\r\0\x0B" ] ) : string

This function returns a string with whitespace stripped from the beginning and end of str.
Without the second parameter, trim() will strip these characters:

    " " (ASCII 32 (0x20)), an ordinary space.
    "\t" (ASCII 9 (0x09)), a tab.
    "\n" (ASCII 10 (0x0A)), a new line (line feed).
    "\r" (ASCII 13 (0x0D)), a carriage return.
    "\0" (ASCII 0 (0x00)), the NUL-byte.
    "\x0B" (ASCII 11 (0x0B)), a vertical tab.

It's there to remove line breaks from different kinds of text files, but does not handle html.

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You can use preg_replace in order to replace parts of a string matching a regular expression, like:

preg_replace("/\s+/","",$string);

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