Exploding strings in PHP

Question

I have the following bit of PHP code.

Ultimately, I'd like to store Michael is 26 in the $str1 variable and He likes green cars.And white footballsAnd red lolliesAnd yellow suns in the $str2 variable.

So basically everything in the first paragraph goes in $str1 and everything thereafter goes in $str2.

<?php
    $str = "<p>Michael is 26</p><p>He likes green cars.</p><p>And white footballs</p><p>And red lollies</p><p>And yellow suns</p>";
    $strArray = explode('</p>', $str);
    $str1 = $strArray[0] . '</p> ';
    echo $str1;
    // variable to export remainder of string (minus the $str1 value) ?
?>

How do I achieve this?

Many thanks for any pointers.

Naftali · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-18 15:55:55Z

7

Use explode with a delimiter:

 explode('</p>', $str, 2);

This will return:

array (
   0 => '<p>Michael is 26',
   1 => '<p>He likes green cars.</p><p>And white footballs</p><p>And red lollies</p><p>And yellow suns</p>' 
)

So then all you have to do is:

$strArray = explode('</p>', $str, 2);
$str1 = $strArray[0] . '</p> ';
$str2 = $strArray[1];
echo $str1.$str2; //will output the original string again

answered Oct 18, 2011 at 15:55

Naftali

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greg0ire · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-18 16:08:37Z

3

No explode() is necessary here. Simple string operations (strpos(), substr())will do fine:

$str = "<p>Michael is 26</p><p>He likes green cars.</p><p>And white footballs</p><p>And red lollies</p><p>And yellow suns</p>";
$str1 = substr($str, 0, strpos($str, "</p>") + strlen("</p>"));
$str2 = substr($str, strpos($str, "</p>") + strlen("</p>"));

echo $str1;
// <p>Michael is 26</p>
echo $str2;
// <p>He likes green cars.</p><p>And white footballs</p><p>And red lollies</p><p>And yellow suns</p>

edited Oct 18, 2011 at 16:08

greg0ire

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answered Oct 18, 2011 at 15:56

Michael Berkowski

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3 Comments

user973254 Over a year ago

substr() and strpos() may be slower and why should he use it if with explode() he can achieve same result easier? :)

Yousf Over a year ago

minor modification is to remove the magic number 4, and replace it with strlen("").

Packet Tracer Over a year ago

nice solution!!! I prefer this one, it does what its intended to do, and not exploding, imploding, etc... the code it's clear

Packet Tracer · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-18 15:56:43Z

0

using your code, appending this should do the job

unset($strArray[0]);

$str2 = implode('</p>', $strArray);

answered Oct 18, 2011 at 15:56

Packet Tracer

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Comments

hakre · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-18 19:05:00Z

0

You can use preg_split^Docs for this, unlike explode it allows to just look where to split. And it supports a limit as well:

list($str1, $str2) = preg_split('~(?<=</p>)~', $str, 2);

Demo

answered Oct 18, 2011 at 19:05

hakre

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