3v4l.org

run code in 300+ PHP versions simultaneously
<?php $row['item']='item1|item2|item 3||item 4|||yyyy-mm-dd'; $row['item']=preg_replace(['~\|+(?=[^|]+$)~','~\|+~'],[' ',', '],$row['item']); echo $row['item'];
Output for 7.1.0 - 7.1.25, 7.2.0 - 7.2.33, 7.3.0 - 7.3.33, 7.4.0 - 7.4.33, 8.0.0 - 8.0.30, 8.1.0 - 8.1.33, 8.2.0 - 8.2.29, 8.3.0 - 8.3.26, 8.4.1 - 8.4.13
item1, item2, item 3, item 4 yyyy-mm-dd

preferences:
129.44 ms | 407 KiB | 5 Q