Try this:
(^| ).( |$)
Breakdown:
1. (^| ) -> Beginning of line or space
2. . -> Any character
3. ( |$) -> Space or End of line
Actual code:
$string = preg_replace('/(^| ).( |$)/', '$1', $string);
Note: I'm not familiar with the workings of PHP regex, so the code might need a slight tweak depending on how the actual regex needs declared.
As m.buettner pointed out, there will be a trailing white space here with this code. A trim would be needed to clear it out.
Edit: Arnis Juraga pointed out that this would not clear out multiple single characters a b c
would filter out to b
. If this is an issues use this regex:
(^| ).(( ).)*( |$)
The (( ).)*
added to the middle will look for any space following by any character 0 or more times. The downside is this will end up with double spaces where a series of single characters were located.
Meaning this:
The a b c dog
Will become this:
The dog
After performing the replacement to get single individual characters, you would need to use the following regex to locate the double spaces, then replace with a single space
( ){2}