How to disable empty <p> tags in comment_text()

Question

Im not sure if you guys have encountered this problem, but WordPress appends empty <p> tags before and after the body of text from the comment_text() function.

Strangely, when you echo get_comment_text() or echo $comment->comment_content (same thing) the empty <p> tags disappear before and after the body of text.

This is entirely exclusive to a call to comment_text(). If you'd like to recreate it the problem, give your <p> tags top and bottom padding.

Anyway to fix this?

Answer 1

If you look in wp-includes/default-filters.php you'll see all of the functions each comment is run through before it's output. I'd guess it's the last one, wpautop, which adds p tags in place of line breaks:

add_filter( 'comment_text', 'wptexturize'            );
add_filter( 'comment_text', 'convert_chars'          );
add_filter( 'comment_text', 'make_clickable',      9 );
add_filter( 'comment_text', 'force_balance_tags', 25 );
add_filter( 'comment_text', 'convert_smilies',    20 );
add_filter( 'comment_text', 'wpautop',            30 );

You can remove_filter( 'comment_text', 'wpautop', 30 ); to confirm, but you'll lose paragraphs entirely.