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# split

(PHP 3, PHP 4 )

split -- split string into array by regular expression

## Description

array split ( string pattern, string string [, int limit])

> Note: preg_split(), which uses a Perl-compatible regular expression syntax, is often a faster alternative to split().

Returns an array of strings, each of which is a substring of `string` formed by splitting it on boundaries formed by the regular expression `pattern`. If `limit` is set, the returned array will contain a maximum of `limit` elements with the last element containing the whole rest of `string`. If an error occurs, split() returns `FALSE`.

To split off the first four fields from a line from `/etc/passwd`:

Example 1. split() Example

    list($user,$pass,$uid,$gid,$extra)= split (":", $passwd_line, 5);

> Note: If there are `n` occurrences of `pattern`, the returned array will contain ``n`+1` items. For example, if there is no occurrence of `pattern`, an array with only one element will be returned. Of course, this is also true if `string` is empty.

To parse a date which may be delimited with slashes, dots, or hyphens:

Example 2. split() Example

    $date = "04/30/1973";  // Delimiters may be slash, dot, or hyphen
    list ($month, $day, $year) = split ('[/.-]', $date);
    echo "Month: $month; Day: $day; Year: $year<br>\n";

Note that `pattern` is case-sensitive.

Note that if you don't require the power of regular expressions, it is faster to use explode(), which doesn't incur the overhead of the regular expression engine.

For users looking for a way to emulate Perl's @chars = split('', $str) behaviour, please see the examples for preg_split().

Please note that `pattern` is a regular expression. If you want to split on any of the characters which are considered special by regular expressions, you'll need to escape them first. If you think split() (or any other regex function, for that matter) is doing something weird, please read the file `regex.7`, included in the `regex/` subdirectory of the PHP distribution. It's in manpage format, so you'll want to do something along the lines of man /usr/local/src/regex/regex.7 in order to read it.

See also: preg_split(), spliti(), explode(), implode(), chunk_split(), and wordwrap().

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