Syntax
array
split ( string pattern, string string [, int limit] )
Tip:
preg_split(), which uses a Perl-compatible regular
expression syntax, is often a faster alternative to
split(). If you don't require the power of regular
expressions, it is faster to use explode(), which
doesn't incur the overhead of the regular expression engine.
Returns an array of strings, each of which is a substring of
string formed by splitting it on
boundaries formed by the case-sensitive regular expression
pattern. If limit
is set, the returned array will contain a maximum of
limit elements with the last element
containing the whole rest of string. If
an error occurs, split() returns FALSE.
To split off the first four fields from a line from
/etc/passwd:
Example 1. split() example
<?php
list($user, $pass, $uid, $gid, $extra) =
split(":", $passwd_line, 5);
?>
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If there are n occurrences of
pattern, the returned array will contain
n+1 items. For example, if
there is no occurrence of pattern, an array with
only one element will be returned. Of course, this is also true if
string is empty.
To parse a date which may be delimited with slashes, dots, or
hyphens:
Example 2. split() example
<?php
// Delimiters may be slash, dot, or hyphen
$date = "04/30/1973";
list($month, $day, $year) = split('[/.-]', $date);
echo "Month: $month; Day: $day; Year: $year<br />\n";
?>
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For users looking for a way to emulate Perl's @chars =
split('', $str) behaviour, please see the examples for
preg_split().
Please note that pattern is a regular
expression. If you want to split on any of the characters which
are considered special by regular expressions, you'll need to
escape them first. If you think split() (or
any other regex function, for that matter) is doing something
weird, please read the file regex.7,
included in the regex/ subdirectory of the
PHP distribution. It's in manpage format, so you'll want to do
something along the lines of man
/usr/local/src/regex/regex.7 in order to read it.
See also: preg_split(), spliti(),
explode(), implode(),
chunk_split(), and wordwrap().