(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)
preg_split — Split string by a regular expression
preg_split ( string $pattern , string $subject [, int $limit = -1 [, int $flags = 0 ]] ) : array|false
Split the given string by a regular expression.
pattern
The pattern to search for, as a string.
subject
The input string.
limit
If specified, then only substrings up to limit are returned with the rest of the string being placed in the last substring. A limit of -1 or 0 means "no limit".
flags
flags can be any combination of the following flags (combined with the | bitwise operator):
PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY
PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE
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.
Returns an array containing substrings of subject split along boundaries matched by pattern, or false on failure.
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
$keywords = preg_split("/[\s,]+/", "hypertext language, programming");
print_r($keywords);
?> The above example will output:
Array
(
[0] => hypertext
[1] => language
[2] => programming
)
Example #2 Splitting a string into component characters
<?php
$str = 'string';
$chars = preg_split('//', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
print_r($chars);
?> The above example will output:
Array
(
[0] => s
[1] => t
[2] => r
[3] => i
[4] => n
[5] => g
)
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
)
)
If you don't need the power of regular expressions, you can choose faster (albeit simpler) alternatives like explode() or str_split().
If matching fails, an array with a single element containing the input string will be returned.
© 1997–2020 The PHP Documentation Group
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License v3.0 or later.
https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-split.php