I would like to split a string by an array of characters, how would I do that? I notice preg_split takes a string input not an array.
For example, here is my array:
$splitting_strings = array(".", ";", "-", "and", "for");
$text = "What a great day, and I love it. Who knows; maybe I will go.";
$result = array (
0 => "What a great day",
1 => "I love it",
2 => "Who knows",
3 => "maybe I will go");
You can pass preg_split() the following:
$regex = '/(' . implode('|', $splitting_strings) . ')/';
You will need to escape any special regex characters such as .. So you should end up with something like this instead:
// run through each element in the array escaping any
// special regex chars
$splitting_strings = array_map(function($string) {
return preg_quote($string);
}, $splitting_strings);
$regex = '/(' . implode('|', $splitting_strings) . ')/';
$final_array = preg_split($regex, $splitting_strings);
The output of $final_array after all this is:
array(5) {
[0]=>
string(18) "What a great day, "
[1]=>
string(10) " I love it"
[2]=>
string(10) " Who knows"
[3]=>
string(16) " maybe I will go"
[4]=>
string(0) ""
}
. to stop it from splitting on everything! :)