php - Regex for identifying all kinds of spaces to be used as a delimiter for exploding a string into an array? -

i'm not proficient regular expressions when needed identify if paragraph (post excerpt in wordpress) started word "by" , if did apply css class word "by" , next 2 words did exploding string array delimited space, manipulating array , imploding it.

something weird happening though. " " delimiter doesn't work on spaces (and there no double spaces being used). there multiple versions of space character out there?

shouldn't whole site have same encoding type , therefore there 1 space character?

if edit 1 of problem posts , delete first couple of spaces , replace them new spaces, code works fine.

my code below (i know declared lot of variables): part under elseif{ describing, pasted whole conditional block reference.

$byline = strtolower(string_limit_words(get_the_excerpt(),1)); $storysnippet = string_limit_words(get_the_excerpt(),16); $storyexplode = explode(' ', $storysnippet);  if (($byline=="by") && strtolower($storyexplode[3])=="and") {     $storyslice = array_slice($storyexplode, 6);     $storylast = implode(' ', $storyslice); ?>     <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" class="byline">     <?php echo string_limit_words(get_the_excerpt(),6); ?></a>     <?php echo "  ".$storylast."&hellip;";  } elseif ($byline=="by") {     $storyslice = array_slice($storyexplode, 3);     $storylast = implode(' ', $storyslice); ?>     <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" style="color:#888;font-style:italic;font-size:90%;">     <?php echo string_limit_words(get_the_excerpt(),3); ?></a>     <?php echo"  ".$storylast."&hellip;";  }  else {      echo string_limit_words(get_the_excerpt(),16)."&hellip;";  } 

edit:

currently using preg_split('|\s+|', $storysnippet) instead of exploding array ' ', i'm still experiencing same problem.

live on adovatedaily.com, 3rd entry under "opinion" column halfway down page.

editx2:

converted 1 of problem strings hex. "by jen" converts 4279c2a04a656e. there's no 20 in there , there appears character.. gives?

thanks comments discovered space in question causing problem non breaking space (c2a0 in hex).

i replaced string's white space regular spaces using line below, solving problem.

$spacedexcerpt = preg_replace('/\xc2\xa0/', ' ', get_the_excerpt());