removing unwanted characters from string in php - php

Question

I'm using a database to store variables of user names and then access them using php. A form with post method is used to invoke a php file which access the database, retrieves all the user names and then compares them with the entered values. The user names are stored in $row['name'] variable and the name is stored in $photographer variable.
The problem is that there are some characters attached in string of variable $row['name'] when being accessed from db which I can't get rid of.
I thought using these variables directly might be causing some problems so I saved their values in other two variables. But the problem didn't go away.
Below is the php code:
//pin check module
$connection = mysqli_connect("localhost","root","","members") or die(mysqli_error($connection));
$select_query_pin = "SELECT name, pin FROM members";
$select_query_pin_result = mysqli_query($connection, $select_query_pin) or die (mysqli_error($connection));
$total = mysqli_num_rows($select_query_pin_result);
$pin = $_POST['pin'];
$title = explode(",",$_POST['title']);
$url = explode(",",$_POST['url']);
$photographer = $_POST['photographer'];
$genere = explode(",",$_POST['genere']);
$entry = sizeof($title);
while ($total) {
--$total;
$row = mysqli_fetch_array($select_query_pin_result);
$name_sample = $row['name'];
$test_sample = $photographer;
// chop($name_sample);
// chop($test_sample);
preg_replace( "/\r|\n/", "", $name_sample );
// for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($name_sample); $i++) {
// if ($name_sample[$i] == " ")
// echo 'true';
// }
var_dump($name_sample,$test_sample);
if ($name_sample === $test_sample)
echo 'true<br>';
else
echo "false<br>";}
As you can see, I tried using the chop and preg_replace methods but it didn't work. When I check the strings using var_dump, it gives unequal lengths for equal strings. The html view of above code is this:html output
Is there a way to deal with it?