Unix command to remove whitespace in the first few lines

Question

I'm using this unix command(in a php file) to remove a certain string and then remove the whitespace left by that string. Unfortunately in many cases, the files get completely erased.

Is there a workaround?

<?php

$dir = "./";

$rmcode = `find $dir -name "*.php"
-type f |xargs sed -i 'somestring' 2>&1`; echo "String removed.<br />\n";

$emptyline = `find $dir -name "*.php"
-type f | xargs sed -i '/./,$!d' 2>&1`; echo "Empty lines removed.<br
/>\n";

?>

---

Edit

Would this work?

$emptyline = `find $dir -name "*.php"
-type f | xargs sed -i '/./,$!d' 2>&1`; echo "Empty lines removed.<br
/>\n";

becomes

$emptyline = `find $dir -name "*.php"
-type f | xargs sed -i '/\s/,$!d' 2>&1`; echo "Empty lines removed.<br
/>\n";

Answer 1

so

$emptyline = find $dir -name "*.php" -type f | xargs sed -i '/./,$!d' 2>&1; echo "Empty lines removed.\n";

becomes

$emptyline = find $dir -name "*.php" -type f | xargs sed -i '/\s/,$!d' 2>&1; echo "Empty lines removed.\n";

??

Answer 2

try removing the string AND the whitespace all at once:

<?php

$dir = "./";

$rmcode = `find $dir -name "*.php" -type f | xargs sed -i 's/somestring\s*//g' 2>&1`; echo "String removed.<br />\n";

?>

The \s matches whitespace.
The * means zero or more times.

---

Updated with working example.

fseto@bass:~/src$ echo "test somestring is a test" > testfile
fseto@bass:~/src$ cat testfile
test somestring is a test
fseto@bass:~/src$ sed -i 's/somestring\s*//g' testfile 
fseto@bass:~/src$ cat testfile
test is a test

Answer 3

I dont seem to be able to comment on the question above, but my answer for "Jonathan" . Im trying to remove the string from the line that contains it and once done, remove the whitespace left by that line. So if i have

line1 somestring line2 somethingelse line3 else..

ill end up with

line1 somethingelse line2 else...