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javipas
Asked: 2011-03-13 16:52:57 +0800 CST

MySQL, replacing   with... nothing (delete those, please!)

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I'm trying to purge my WordPress content from "false" carriage return (CR). These are caused after a migration of my content, that now presents from time to time a   code that makes the web rendering engine to "paint" a CR where I would like to be nothing. The paragraphs seem to have a double CR because of this, and look too far apart.

I'd like to be able to make a MySQL query in order to get rid of that strings, but at the moment I haven't found the key. What I've tried is 

UPDATE wp_posts set post_content = replace (post_content,' ',' ');

But i get 

<p> </p>

where before were the &nbsp; strings. This seems not the answer at all. Could it have to be with the ampersand, and in that case, should I use something like &amp;nbsp; or something similar?

mysql wordpress replace

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I am not sure why &nbsp; would be interpreted as a carriage return, because it should look like a space (Non-Breaking SPace). In any case, I was able to get your SQL to work on a test database I created by changing the string to have double-quotes.

    UPDATE wp_posts set post_content = replace (post_content,"&nbsp;","");

    Also note, there is no space between the last pair. You want it to replace &nbsp; with nothing, not a space.

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  2. The code <p>&nbsp;</p> is frequently used by some GUI HTML editors to represent a carriage return. I would be that what you really need to be searching for and removing is <p>&nbsp;</p>, and not just &nbsp; which is just a non-breaking space character.

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  3. You now might have cases with <p></p> since you've replaced the &nbsp;s with empty strings.

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