- var_dump: documentation ( source)
- bin2hex: documentation ( source)
- preg_replace: documentation ( source)
<?php
// remove duplicated spaces into single spaces but persist special spaces like the non-breaking-space
$normalized = "\xC2\xA0 | \xE1\xBA\xA0 ";
$normalized = preg_replace("/([ \xC2\xA0])?\\s+/u", '$1 ', $normalized);
$normalized = preg_replace('/([ \xC2\xA0]) /u', '$1', $normalized);
var_dump($normalized, bin2hex($normalized));