PHP multiple substr on string

Like this (because I said it in the comments)

$str = 'Invoice No..... Sale Type Desc...... Misc Amt.... Misc Acc.. Misc Acc Desc.....................................';

$f = fopen('php://temp', 'w+');
fwrite($f, $str);
rewind($f);
$headers = [];

$header = '';
while(false !== ($c = fgetc($f))){
    if($c != '.'){
        $header .= $c;
    }elseif(!empty($header)){
        $headers[] = trim($header);
        $header = '';
    }
}

print_r($headers);

Outputs

Array
(
    [0] => Invoice No
    [1] => Sale Type Desc
    [2] => Misc Amt
    [3] => Misc Acc
    [4] => Misc Acc Desc
)

Note I did this without using an offset, but I mentioned it in the comments and I like doing weird things like this. It's enjoyable.

Of course you could just do this for the same result:

$str = 'Invoice No..... Sale Type Desc...... Misc Amt.... Misc Acc.. Misc Acc Desc.....................................';

print_r(array_filter(array_map('trim',explode('.', $str))));

But that is far, far to easy.

Sandbox

And if you don't like the keys being all wacky you can just lap an array_values on that sucker.

 print_r(array_values(array_filter(array_map('trim',explode('.', $str)))));

LOL, another monday.

UPDATE

You can use the file stream wappers to fix a file for CSV reading, too. In PHP5.4 (I think or 5.3) the SplFileObj is missing fgetcsv and I used a trick with them to patch that class.... :)

This was my point (but there is a lot I don't know)

$str = 'Invoice No..... Sale Type Desc...... Misc Amt.... Misc Acc.. Misc Acc Desc.....................................
somedata .... someother stuff ... foobar ... hello ... world..
';

//pretend this is a real file
$f = fopen('php://temp', 'w+');
fwrite($f, $str);
rewind($f);
$headers = [];
$num_headers = 0;

$i = 1;
while(false !== ($c = fgetcsv($f))){

     //if there is only one element assume the delimiter is wrong
    if(count($c) == 1){
        //you could test the string for multiple delimiters and change
        /*
         if(strpos($c, '.')){
            $regex = '/\.+/'
         }else if(strpos($c, '~')){
            $regex = '/~+/'
         } etc....
        */

        //use memory buffer to fix files with .'s but still read them as
        //a normal CSV file, php://memory is really fast.
        //and this gives us all the parsing benefits of fgetcsv
        //you could use any delimiter here you want.
        $fixed =  trim(preg_replace('/\.+/', ',', $c[0]),',');
        $m = fopen('php://memory', 'w+');
        fwrite($m, $fixed);
        rewind($m);
        $c = fgetcsv($m);
    }
    //trim any spaces, not a bad idea anyway
    $c = array_map('trim', $c);

    //if no headers use the first line of file as the header
    if(empty($headers)){
        $headers = $c;
        //count them (see below)
        $num_headers = count($headers);
        continue;
    }

     //array_combine is a good choice for header => values
     //but the arrays have to be the same size
    if(count($c) != $num_headers) die("missing dilimter on line {$i}");

    $line = array_combine($headers, $c);

    //continue with normal csv opperation
    print_r($line);

    ++$i; //track the line number
}

Output

Array
(
    [Invoice No] => somedata
    [Sale Type Desc] => someother stuff
    [Misc Amt] => foobar
    [Misc Acc] => hello
    [Misc Acc Desc] => world
)

UPDATE

As I mentioned in the comments (after finding out it was HTML). You can use a DOM parser. One I have used in the past is PHPQuery it's a bit dated now. But it's nice because you can use jQuery syntax. For example say you have this

<ul id="title" >
    <li>header</li>
    <li>header</li>
    <li>header</li>
</ul>

You can find it with something like this (it's been a while, so if this is wrong sorry)

  $length =  $PHPQuery->find("#headers li")->lenght;

   for($i=0;$i<$lenght;++$i){
      echo $PHPQuery->find("#headers li:eq($i)")->text();
   }

You can even pull attributes using ->attr('href') for example. Basically you can take advantage of the HTML structure and pull what you need instead of converting it to text and trying to remove a bunch of "stuff"

Cheers!