How can developers ensure that multiple spaces are not lost when processing strings in PHP?

When processing strings in PHP, developers can ensure that multiple spaces are not lost by using the `preg_replace` function with a regular expression pattern that replaces multiple spaces with a single space. This regex pattern matches one or more consecutive spaces and replaces them with a single space, effectively preserving the spacing in the string. 

$string = "Hello    world!   This   is   a   test.";
$processed_string = preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', $string);
echo $processed_string;

Keywords

PHP string processing multiple spaces whitespace preservation trim()

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