[FIXED] How to remove indentations or spaces from HTML comment tags?

Issue

Here is my code:

$template = preg_replace("\s*/\<\!\-\-\{(.+?)\}\-\-\>/s", "{\\1}", $template);

And the html which I want to remove indentations of comment:

    <!--{hello}-->
    <div class="novalue">
        <a>URL</a>
    </div>
    <!--{/hello}-->

I want it to be like this:

{hello}
    <div class="novalue">
        <a>URL</a>
    </div>
{/hello}

But, the result was:

{hello}
        <div class="novalue">
            <a></a>
        </div>{/hello}

My question is, why can't it just remove other space at the front of the current line ?

Solution

\s includes linebreak, you want to use \h for horizontal spaces instead And don't escape all characters in your regex, it becomes unreadable:

$html = <<<EOD
    <!--{hello}-->
    <div class="novalue">
        <a>URL</a>
    </div>
    <!--{/hello}-->
EOD;

echo preg_replace('#\h*<!--({.+?})-->#', '$1', $html);

Output:

{hello}
    <div class="novalue">
        <a>URL</a>
    </div>
{/hello}

Explanation:

#           # regex delimiter
  \h*       # 0 or more horizontal spaces
  <!--      # literally, begin comment
  (         # start group 1
    {       # opening curly brace
    .+?     # 1 or more any character, not greedy
    }       # closing curly brace
  )         # end group 1
  -->       # literally, end comment
#           # regex delimiter

Answered By - Toto

Answer Checked By - Terry (PHPFixing Volunteer)