Hi. My personal preference would be to use
PHP Code:
$text = ereg_replace("[[:blank:]]+"," ",eregi_replace("<[^>]*>","",$text));
Of the two choices you mentioned, I would modify and choose
PHP Code:
$text = ereg_replace("[[:blank:]]+"," ",preg_replace('/<.*>/sU', '', $text));
It seems strip_tags is more lenient now than in older PHP versions.