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preg_split

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

preg_splitDivide uma string com base em expressão regular

Descrição

preg_split(
    string $pattern,
    string $subject,
    int $limit = -1,
    int $flags = 0
): array|false

Divide a string informada com base em uma expressão regular.

Parâmetros

pattern

A expressão a ser pesquisada, como uma string.

subject

A string de entrada.

limit

Se especificado, somente substrings de até limit bytes são retornadas com o resto da string sendo colocado na última substring. Um valor de -1 ou 0 em limit significa "sem limite".

flags

flags pode ser qualquer combinação das seguintes opções (combinadas com o operador binário |):

PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY
Se esta opção for definida, somente partes não vazias serão retornadas por preg_split().
PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE
Se esta opção for definida, expressões entre parênteses na expressão serão capturadas e também retornadas.
PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE

Se esta opção for definida, para cada correspondência que ocorrer, a sua posição na string de entrada também será retornada. Observe que isto altera o valor de retorno para um array onde cada elemento é um array consistindo da string correspondida no índice 0 e seu deslocamento na string de entrada (subject) no índice 1.

Valor Retornado

Retorna um array contendo substrings de subject divididas ao longo de limites correspondidos por pattern, ou false em caso de falha.

Erros/Exceções

Se o padrão de expressão regular passado não for compilado para uma expressão regular válida, um E_WARNING será emitido.

Exemplos

Exemplo #1 Exemplo de preg_split(): Obter partes de uma string de pesquisa

<?php
// divide a frase por qualquer número de vírgulas ou caracteres representativos de espaço,
// que incluem " ", \r, \t, \n e \f
$keywords = preg_split("/[\s,]+/", "hypertext language, programming");
print_r($keywords);
?>

O exemplo acima produzirá:

Array
(
    [0] => hypertext
    [1] => language
    [2] => programming
)

Exemplo #2 Dividindo uma string em seus caracteres componentes

<?php
$str
= 'string';
$chars = preg_split('//', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
print_r($chars);
?>

O exemplo acima produzirá:

Array
(
    [0] => s
    [1] => t
    [2] => r
    [3] => i
    [4] => n
    [5] => g
)

Exemplo #3 Dividindo uma string em correspondências e suas posições

<?php
$str
= 'hypertext language programming';
$chars = preg_split('/ /', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
print_r($chars);
?>

O exemplo acima produzirá:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => hypertext
            [1] => 0
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => language
            [1] => 10
        )

    [2] => Array
        (
            [0] => programming
            [1] => 19
        )

)

Notas

Dica

Se o poder das expressões regulares não for necessário, pode-se optar por alternativas mais rápidas (e simples) como explode() ou str_split().

Dica

Se a correspondência falhar, um array com um único elemento contendo a string de entrada será retornado.

Veja Também

add a note

User Contributed Notes 18 notes

up
43
jan dot sochor at icebolt dot info
14 years ago
Sometimes PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE does strange results.

<?php
$content
= '<strong>Lorem ipsum dolor</strong> sit <img src="test.png" />amet <span class="test" style="color:red">consec<i>tet</i>uer</span>.';
$chars = preg_split('/<[^>]*[^\/]>/i', $content, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY | PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
print_r($chars);
?>
Produces:
Array
(
[0] => Lorem ipsum dolor
[1] => sit <img src="test.png" />amet
[2] => consec
[3] => tet
[4] => uer
)

So that the delimiter patterns are missing. If you wanna get these patters remember to use parentheses.

<?php
$chars
= preg_split('/(<[^>]*[^\/]>)/i', $content, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY | PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
print_r($chars); //parentheses added
?>
Produces:
Array
(
[0] => <strong>
[1] => Lorem ipsum dolor
[2] => </strong>
[3] => sit <img src="test.png" />amet
[4] => <span class="test" style="color:red">
[5] => consec
[6] => <i>
[7] => tet
[8] => </i>
[9] => uer
[10] => </span>
[11] => .
)
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20
buzoganylaszlo at yahoo dot com
15 years ago
Extending m.timmermans's solution, you can use the following code as a search expression parser:

<?php
$search_expression
= "apple bear \"Tom Cruise\" or 'Mickey Mouse' another word";
$words = preg_split("/[\s,]*\\\"([^\\\"]+)\\\"[\s,]*|" . "[\s,]*'([^']+)'[\s,]*|" . "[\s,]+/", $search_expression, 0, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY | PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
print_r($words);
?>

The result will be:
Array
(
[0] => apple
[1] => bear
[2] => Tom Cruise
[3] => or
[4] => Mickey Mouse
[5] => another
[6] => word
)

1. Accepted delimiters: white spaces (space, tab, new line etc.) and commas.

2. You can use either simple (') or double (") quotes for expressions which contains more than one word.
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11
canadian dot in dot exile at gmail dot com
8 years ago
This regular expression will split a long string of words into an array of sub-strings, of some maximum length, but only on word-boundries.

I use the reg-ex with preg_match_all(); but, I'm posting this example here (on the page for preg_split()) because that's where I looked when I wanted to find a way to do this.

Hope it saves someone some time.

<?php
// example of a long string of words
$long_string = 'Your IP Address will be logged with the submitted note and made public on the PHP manual user notes mailing list. The IP address is logged as part of the notes moderation process, and won\'t be shown within the PHP manual itself.';

// "word-wrap" at, for example, 60 characters or less
$max_len = 60;

// this regular expression will split $long_string on any sub-string of
// 1-or-more non-word characters (spaces or punctuation)
if(preg_match_all("/.{1,{$max_len}}(?=\W+)/", $long_string, $lines) !== False) {

// $lines now contains an array of sub-strings, each will be approx.
// $max_len characters - depending on where the last word ended and
// the number of 'non-word' characters found after the last word
for ($i=0; $i < count($lines[0]); $i++) {
echo
"[$i] {$lines[0][$i]}\n";
}
}
?>
up
7
Hayley Watson
5 years ago
Assuming you're using UTF-8, this function can be used to separate Unicode text into individual codepoints without the need for the multibyte extension.

<?php

preg_split
('//u', $text, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

?>

The words "English", "Español", and "Русский" are all seven letters long. But strlen would report string lengths 7, 8 and 14, respectively. The preg_split above would return a seven-element array in all three cases.

It splits '한국어' into the array ['한', '국', '어'] instead of the 9-character array that str_split($text) would produce.
up
13
eric at clarinova dot com
13 years ago
Here is another way to split a CamelCase string, which is a simpler expression than the one using lookaheads and lookbehinds:

preg_split('/([[:upper:]][[:lower:]]+)/', $last, null, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE|PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY)

It makes the entire CamelCased word the delimiter, then returns the delimiters (PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE) and omits the empty values between the delimiters (PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY)
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13
Daniel Schroeder
13 years ago
If you want to split by a char, but want to ignore that char in case it is escaped, use a lookbehind assertion.

In this example a string will be split by ":" but "\:" will be ignored:

<?php
$string
='a:b:c\:d';
$array=preg_split('#(?<!\\\)\:#',$string);
print_r($array);
?>

Results into:

Array
(
[0] => a
[1] => b
[2] => c\:d
)
up
1
dewi at dewimorgan dot com
2 years ago
Beware that it is not safe to assume there are no empty values returned by PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY, nor that you will see no delimiters if you use PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE, as there are some edge cases where these are not true.

<?php
# As expected, splitting a string by itself returns two empty strings:
var_export(preg_split("/x/", "x"));

array (
0 => '',
1 => '',
)

# But if we add PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY, then instead of an empty array, we get the delimiter.
var_export(preg_split("/x/", "x", PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY));

array (
0 => 'x',
)

And if
we try to split an empty string, then instead of an empty array, we get an empty string even with PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY.
var_export(preg_split("/x/", "", PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY));

array (
0 => '',
)
?>
up
6
PhoneixSegovia at gmail dot com
13 years ago
You must be caution when using lookbehind to a variable match.
For example:
'/(?<!\\\)\r?\n)/'
to match a new line when not \ is before it don't go as spected as it match \r as the lookbehind (becouse isn't a \) and is optional before \n.

You must use this for example:
'/((?<!\\\|\r)\n)|((?<!\\\)\r\n)/'
That match a alone \n (not preceded by \r or \) or a \r\n not preceded by a \.
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4
Steve
19 years ago
preg_split() behaves differently from perl's split() if the string ends with a delimiter. This perl snippet will print 5:

my @a = split(/ /, "a b c d e ");
print scalar @a;

The corresponding php code prints 6:

<?php print count(preg_split("/ /", "a b c d e ")); ?>

This is not necessarily a bug (nowhere does the documentation say that preg_split() behaves the same as perl's split()) but it might surprise perl programmers.
up
4
php at dmi dot me dot uk
15 years ago
To split a camel-cased string using preg_split() with lookaheads and lookbehinds:

<?php
function splitCamelCase($str) {
return
preg_split('/(?<=\\w)(?=[A-Z])/', $str);
}
?>
up
7
jetsoft at iinet.net.au
20 years ago
To clarify the "limit" parameter and the PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE option,

<?php
$preg_split
('(/ /)', '1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8', 4 ,PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE );
?>

returns:

('1', ' ', '2', ' ' , '3', ' ', '4 5 6 7 8')

So you actually get 7 array items not 4
up
3
csaba at alum dot mit dot edu
15 years ago
If the task is too complicated for preg_split, preg_match_all might come in handy, since preg_split is essentially a special case.

I wanted to split a string on a certain character (asterisk), but only if it wasn't escaped (by a preceding backslash). Thus, I should ensure an even number of backslashes before any asterisk meant as a splitter. Look-behind in a regular expression wouldn't work since the length of the preceding backslash sequence can't be fixed. So I turned to preg_match_all:

<?php
// split a string at unescaped asterisks
// where backslash is the escape character
$splitter = "/\\*((?:[^\\\\*]|\\\\.)*)/";
preg_match_all($splitter, "*$string", $aPieces, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
$aPieces = $aPieces[1];

// $aPieces now contains the exploded string
// and unescaping can be safely done on each piece
foreach ($aPieces as $idx=>$piece)
$aPieces[$idx] = preg_replace("/\\\\(.)/s", "$1", $piece);
?>
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3
david dot binovec at gmail dot com
13 years ago
Limit = 1 may be confusing. The important thing is that in case of limit equals to 1 will produce only ONE substring. Ergo the only one substring will be the first one as well as the last one. Tnat the rest of the string (after the first delimiter) will be placed to the last substring. But last is the first and only one.

<?php

$output
= $preg_split('(/ /)', '1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8', 1);

echo
$output[0] //will return whole string!;

$output = $preg_split('(/ /)', '1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8', 2);

echo
$output[0] //will return 1;
echo $output[1] //will return '2 3 4 5 6 7 8';

?>
up
1
Miller
10 years ago
This is a function to truncate a string of text while preserving the whitespace (for instance, getting an excerpt from an article while maintaining newlines). It will not jive well with HTML, of course.

<?php
/**
* Truncates a string of text by word count
* @param string $text The text to truncate
* @param int $max_words The maximum number of words
* @return string The truncated text
*/
function limit_words ($text, $max_words) {
$split = preg_split('/(\s+)/', $text, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
$truncated = '';
for (
$i = 0; $i < min(count($split), $max_words*2); $i += 2) {
$truncated .= $split[$i].$split[$i+1];
}
return
trim($truncated);
}
?>
up
0
Walf
2 years ago
Using PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE without PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY guarantees that all the odd-numbered keys in the result will contain the delimiters. This makes further processing more predictable, and empty strings can always be filtered out at the end.
up
0
kenorb at gmail dot com
15 years ago
If you need convert function arguments without default default values and references, you can try this code:

<?php
$func_args
= '$node, $op, $a3 = NULL, $form = array(), $a4 = NULL'
$call_arg = preg_match_all('@(?<func_arg>\$[^,= ]+)@i', $func_args, $matches);
$call_arg = implode(',', $matches['func_arg']);
?>
Result: string = "$node,$op,$a3,$form,$a4"
up
-3
markac
9 years ago
Split string into words.

<?php
$string
= 'This - is a, very dirty "string" :-)';

// split into words
$wordlist = preg_split('/\W/', $string, 0, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

// returns only words that have minimum 2 chars
$wordlist = array_filter($wordlist, function($val) {
return
strlen($val) >= 2;
});

// print
var_dump($wordlist);
?>

Result:

array (size=5)
0 => string 'This' (length=4)
1 => string 'is' (length=2)
3 => string 'very' (length=4)
4 => string 'dirty' (length=5)
5 => string 'string' (length=6)
up
-3
php at haravikk dot me
7 years ago
When using the PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE option you will end up with all results in a single array, which is often undesirable as it means you then have to filter out any delimiters you wanted to check for but not keep.

To get around this you can instead use preg_match_all() to perform the split. For comparison, here are two examples, both splitting around colon and semi-colon characters:

<?php $pieces_with_delimiters = preg_split('/[;:]/', $input, -1, PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE); ?>

<?php preg_match_all('/([^;:]*)([;:]|$)/', $input, $matches);
list(,
$pieces, $delimiters) = $matches ?>

The latter requires a more complex pattern, but produces a much more convenient set of results to work with, depending upon what you want to do with them.
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