Php/docs/function.split
split
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
split — Split string into array by regular expression
Warning This function was DEPRECATED in PHP 5.3.0, and REMOVED in PHP 7.0.0.
Alternatives to this function include:
Description
split
( string $pattern
, string $string
[, int $limit
= -1
] ) : array
Splits a string
into array by regular expression.
Parameters
pattern
Case sensitive regular expression.
If you want to split on any of the characters which are considered special by regular expressions, you'll need to escape them first. If you think split() (or any other regex function, for that matter) is doing something weird, please read the file
regex.7
, included in theregex/
subdirectory of the PHP distribution. It's in manpage format, so you'll want to do something along the lines of man /usr/local/src/regex/regex.7 in order to read it.string
The input string.
limit
If
limit
is set, the returned array will contain a maximum oflimit
elements with the last element containing the whole rest ofstring
.
Return Values
Returns an array of strings, each of which is a substring of
string
formed by splitting it on boundaries formed
by the case-sensitive regular expression pattern
.
If there are n occurrences of
pattern
, the returned array will contain
n+1
items. For example, if
there is no occurrence of pattern
, an array with
only one element will be returned. Of course, this is also true if
string
is empty. If an error occurs,
split() returns FALSE
.
Examples
Example #1 split() example
To split off the first four fields from a line from
/etc/passwd
:
<?phplist($user, $pass, $uid, $gid, $extra) = split(":", $passwd_line, 5);?>
Example #2 split() example
To parse a date which may be delimited with slashes, dots, or hyphens:
<?php// Delimiters may be slash, dot, or hyphen$date = "04/30/1973";list($month, $day, $year) = split('[/.-]', $date);echo "Month: $month; Day: $day; Year: $year<br />\n";?>
Notes
Tip split() is deprecated as of PHP 5.3.0. preg_split() is the suggested alternative to this function. 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.
Tip For users looking for a way to emulate Perl's @chars = split(, $str)' behaviour, please see the examples for preg_split() or str_split().
See Also
- preg_split() - Split string by a regular expression
- spliti() - Split string into array by regular expression case insensitive
- str_split() - Convert a string to an array
- explode() - Split a string by a string
- implode() - Join array elements with a string
- chunk_split() - Split a string into smaller chunks
- wordwrap() - Wraps a string to a given number of characters