PHP preg_split function

Like this blog? Consider exploring one of our sponsored banner ads...

preg_split

(PHP 3 >= 3.0.9, PHP 4, PHP 5)

Split the given string by a regular expression.

The pattern to search for, as a string.

The input string.

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 can be any combination of the following
flags (combined with bitwise | operator):

If this flag is set, only non-empty pieces will be returned by
preg_split().

If this flag is set, parenthesized expression in the delimiter pattern
will be captured and returned as well.

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.

Example 1. preg_split() example : Get the parts of a search string

// 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

$str = 'string';
$chars = preg_split('//', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
print_r($chars);

Example 3. Splitting a string into matches and their offsets

$str = 'hypertext language programming';
$chars = preg_split('/ /', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
print_r($chars);

The above example will output:

[1] => Array
(
[0] => language
[1] => 10
)

[2] => Array
(
[0] => programming
[1] => 19
)

)

Tip:
If you don’t need the power of regular expressions, you can choose
faster (albeit simpler) alternatives like explode()
or str_split().