PHP Dedent

Dedent is a simple PHP library that removes leading whitespace from a string. It is useful for removing indentation from multi-line strings.

Installation

You can install Dedent using Composer:

composer require exeque/php-dedent

Usage

Basic Usage

Dedent can be used through the Dedent class or the dedent function.

use Exeque\Dedent\Dedent;

$output = Dedent::dedent($input);
// or
$output = dedent($input);

use Exeque\Dedent\Dedent;

$input = <<<INPUT
    This is a multi-line string.
    It has leading whitespace that we want to remove.
        - This line has extra indentation that we want to keep.
INPUT;

$output = dedent($input);

// $output:
// This is a multi-line string.
// It has leading whitespace that we want to remove.
//     - This line has extra indentation that we want to keep.

Tabbed Input

Dedent replaces tabs with spaces by default (1 tab -> 4 spaces). You can change the number of spaces per tab by passing a second argument to the dedent method.

use Exeque\Dedent\Dedent;

$input = <<<INPUT
\tThis is a multi-line string.
\tIt has leading whitespace that we want to remove.
\t\t- This line has extra indentation that we want to keep.
INPUT;

$output = dedent($input);

// $output:
// This is a multi-line string.
// It has leading whitespace that we want to remove.
//     - This line has extra indentation that we want to keep.

// or with custom tab width

$output = dedent($input, 2);

// $output:
// This is a multi-line string.
// It has leading whitespace that we want to remove.
//   - This line has extra indentation that we want to keep.

Testing

You can run the tests using Pest:

composer test

License

Dedent is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.