Split/Explode a string in PHP

Question

I need to split or explode a string.

K1123-Food, Apple, Z3456-Egg, Mushroom, M9902-Plant, Soil, Water, Q8876-Medicine, Car, Splitter

into something like

K1123-Food, Apple
Z3456-Egg, Mushroom
M9902-Plant, Soil, Water
Q8876-Medicine, Car, Splitter

Ideas on how to apply preg_split or explode will be welcomed.

Thanks in advance.

The spacing between the commas can vary in the data string I am working with so this particular explode function will not work. — davykiash, Nov 17 '19 at 11:42
Can you show what you have tried yourself and the problems you have with it? — Nigel Ren, Nov 17 '19 at 11:43
@Nick ```preg_split('/,\s+/', $string);``` returns K1123-Food rather than K1123-Food, Apple and Z3456-Egg rather than Z3456-Egg, Mushroom — davykiash, Nov 17 '19 at 12:00
@NigelRen I am using the ```preg_match_all('~,(.*?)-~', $string, $output);``` approach but not quite there yet. — davykiash, Nov 17 '19 at 12:01
You need to qualify the `, ` sequence with being followed by an uppercase character and digit e.g. `preg_split('/,\s+(?=[A-Z]\d)/', $string);` — Nick, Nov 17 '19 at 12:13
Good to hear. On my phone so too hard to post as an answer. Enjoy — Nick, Nov 17 '19 at 12:20

T Grando · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-17T13:36:11.780

Here is a solution for you, using preg_match_all():

$s = 'K1123-Food, Apple, Z3456-Egg, Mushroom, M9902-Plant, Soil, Water, Q8876-Medicine, Car, Splitter';
$pattern = '/(\w\d+-\w+(, [^\d]*))(, |$)/';
$matches = [];

preg_match_all($pattern, $s, $matches);

print_r($matches[1]);

This outputs

Array
(
    [0] => K1123-Food, Apple
    [1] => Z3456-Egg, Mushroom
    [2] => M9902-Plant, Soil, Water
    [3] => Q8876-Medicine, Car, Splitter
)

OK so this is an advanced solution that tries to capture content mentioned by Toto:

$s = 'K1123-Food, Apple2, 123-456, Mushroom, Z3456-Egg, Mushroom, M9902-Plant, Soil, Water, Q8876-Medicine, Car, Splitter';
$pattern = '/([A-Z]\d+-\w+(.(?!([A-Z]\d))+)+)(, |$)/';
$matches = [];

preg_match_all($pattern, $s, $matches);
print_r($matches[1]);

which outputs

Array
(
    [0] => K1123-Food, Apple2, 123-456, Mushroom
    [1] => Z3456-Egg, Mushroom
    [2] => M9902-Plant, Soil, Water
    [3] => Q8876-Medicine, Car, Splitter
)

Keep in mind that it will never be possible to automatically and correctly put structure into otherwise unstructured content. Every possible solution will make some assumptions about how your data really need to be structured.

Try it with `K1123-Food, Apple2, 123-456, Mushroom` – Toto Nov 17 '19 at 13:08 — Toto, Nov 17 '19 at 13:08
Yeah but that's not what the question is about. – T Grando Nov 17 '19 at 13:10 — T Grando, Nov 17 '19 at 13:10
How do you know there will never be digits in the string? – Toto Nov 17 '19 at 13:13 — Toto, Nov 17 '19 at 13:13
@Toto see my second solution. – T Grando Nov 17 '19 at 13:29 — T Grando, Nov 17 '19 at 13:29

Split/Explode a string in PHP

1 Answers1