An Interest In:
Web News this Week
- April 19, 2024
- April 18, 2024
- April 17, 2024
- April 16, 2024
- April 15, 2024
- April 14, 2024
- April 13, 2024
PHP explode: Splitting strings into arrays
In this tutorial, we look at the PHP explode function. We take a close look at its parameters, return values and its limitations.
This tutorial is a part of our initiative at Flexiple, to write short curated tutorials around often used or interesting concepts.
Table of Contents - PHP foreach:
PHP explode - What is explode in PHP?
PHP explode() is a built-in function that is used to split a string into a string array. It splits a string based on a specified separator that we pass as an argument. Apart from this functionality, the explode method also has a third parameter, limit that can be used to manipulate the number of elements in the array. We take a closer look at this below.
Syntax of PHP explode:
explode(separator,string,limit)
Parameters:
- Separator - Required, used to specify where the string should be split
- String - Required, the string that you want to split
- Limit - Optional, used to specify the number of elements in the string array.
- Positive Value - If a positive value is passed as a parameter, it denotes the number of elements the string array should contain. In case the value is lesser than the number of elements in the array, the N-1th element of the string array would contain all the remaining elements.
- Negative Value - If a negative value is passed the last element will be trimmed off and the and the remaining part of elements would be returned as an array.
- Zero - If zero is passed the element will contain only elements which would be the entire string.
Return Value:
If no limit argument is passed the string array would contain all the elements split by the separator. If a limit value is passed, the return values would be based on that.
Code & Explanation:
<?php // string $string_1 = "Hire Freelance Developer"; // using explode without a limit print_r(explode(" ",$string_1));?>
The output of the above code snippet would be:
Array( [0] => Hire, [1] => Freelance [2] => Developers)
In the above code block, since a limit was not passed the returned array contains a string with all the elements.
Now lets look at an example using the limit:
<?php // string $string_1 = "Hire the top Freelance Developer"; // a positive limit print_r(explode(" ",$string_1,3)); // a negative limit print_r(explode(" ",$string_1,-1));?>
The output of the above code snippet would be:
Array( [0] => Hire, [1] => the [2] => top Freelance Developer)Array( [0] => Hire, [1] => the [2] => top [3] => freelance)
In the first array, since the limit value was less than the number of elements all the remaining elements were passed in the last element. In the last array, since a negative value was passed the last element was removed and all the other values were passed as an array.
Limitation and Caveats - PHP Explode
Note that Explode will throw a Valueerror if the separator parameter is an empty string. Other than this, there are no major constraints in the explode function.
Original Link: https://dev.to/hrishikesh1990/php-explode-splitting-strings-into-arrays-1e2a
Dev To
An online community for sharing and discovering great ideas, having debates, and making friendsMore About this Source Visit Dev To