preg_split
(PHP 3 >= 3.0.9, PHP 4, PHP 5)
preg_split -- Split string by a regular expression
Description
array
preg_split ( string pattern, string subject [, int limit [, int flags]] )
Split the given string by a regular expression.
Parameters
pattern
The pattern to search for, as a string.
subject
The input string.
limit
If specified, then only substrings up to limit
are returned, and if limit is -1, it actually
means "no limit", which is useful for specifying the
flags.
flags
flags can be any combination of the following
flags (combined with bitwise | operator):
- PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY
If this flag is set, only non-empty pieces will be returned by
preg_split().
- PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE
If this flag is set, parenthesized expression in the delimiter pattern
will be captured and returned as well.
- PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE
If this flag is set, for every occurring match the appendant string
offset will also be returned. Note that this changes the return
value in an array where every element is an array consisting of the
matched string at offset 0 and its string offset
into subject at offset 1.
Return Values
Returns an array containing substrings of subject
split along boundaries matched by pattern.
Examples
Example 1. preg_split() example : Get the parts of a search string
<?php
// split the phrase by any number of commas or space characters,
// which include " ", \r, \t, \n and \f
$keywords = preg_split("/[\s,]+/", "hypertext language, programming");
?>
|
|
Example 2. Splitting a string into component characters
<?php
$str = 'string';
$chars = preg_split('//', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
print_r($chars);
?>
|
|
Example 3. Splitting a string into matches and their offsets
<?php
$str = 'hypertext language programming';
$chars = preg_split('/ /', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
print_r($chars);
?>
|
The above example will output: Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => hypertext
[1] => 0
)
[1] => Array
(
[0] => language
[1] => 10
)
[2] => Array
(
[0] => programming
[1] => 19
)
) |
|
Notes
Tip:
If you don't need the power of regular expressions, you can choose
faster (albeit simpler) alternatives like explode()
or str_split().
