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/**
* Turn a piece of HTML into continuous(!) plain text
*
* This function removes HTML tags, line breaks, etc. and returns one long
* line of text. This is useful for word counts (do an explode() on the result)
* and for text excerpts.
*
* @param    string  $text   original text, including HTML and line breaks
* @return   string          continuous plain text
*
*/
function COM_getTextContent($text)
{
    // replace <br> with spaces so that Text<br>Text becomes two words
    $text = preg_replace('/\<br(\s*)?\/?\>/i', ' ', $text);

    // add extra space between tags, e.g. <p>Text</p><p>Text</p>
    $text = str_replace('><', '> <', $text);

    // only now remove all HTML tags
    $text = strip_tags($text);

    // replace all tabs, newlines, and carrriage returns with spaces
    $text = str_replace(array("\011", "\012", "\015"), ' ', $text);

    // replace entities with plain spaces
    $text = str_replace(array('&#20;', '&#160;', '&nbsp;'), ' ', $text);

    // collapse whitespace
    $text = preg_replace('/\s\s+/', ' ', $text);

    return trim($text);
}