php - Remove multiple commas regex

Question

Can someone please let me know how I would remove multiple commas if they were next to one another in PHP.

$address= rtrim(preg_replace('!s+!', ' ', $address_line_1.' '.$address_line_2.', '.$town_village_city.', '.$state_province_county.', '.$postal_code.', '.$country),',');
//return  preg_replace('/([!?,.])+/',' ',$address);
return  preg_replace('!,+!',' ',$address);

For example I may have an address with no town_village so end up with multiple commas.

Also anyone good resources for testing PHP regex?

Answer 1

assuming there are no spaces between these commas, you can simply replace multiple commas with one comma:

$cleadAddress = preg_replace('/,+/', ',', $address);

although you are replacing every comma with a comma (!), you also replace multiple commas. It depends on your exact data if a more complex regex is worth the effort to save some execution time.