How to Split a String into an Array of Unicode Characters in PHP

What is the best way to split a string into an array of Unicode characters in PHP?

You could use the 'u' modifier with PCRE regex ; see Pattern Modifiers (quoting) :

u (PCRE8)

This modifier turns on additional
functionality of PCRE that is
incompatible with Perl. Pattern
strings are treated as UTF-8. This
modifier is available from PHP 4.1.0
or greater on Unix and from PHP 4.2.3
on win32. UTF-8 validity of the
pattern is checked since PHP 4.3.5.

For instance, considering this code :

header('Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');  // So the browser doesn't make our lives harder
$str = "abc 文字化け, efg";

$results = array();
preg_match_all('/./', $str, $results);
var_dump($results[0]);

You'll get an unusable result:

array
  0 => string 'a' (length=1)
  1 => string 'b' (length=1)
  2 => string 'c' (length=1)
  3 => string ' ' (length=1)
  4 => string '�' (length=1)
  5 => string '�' (length=1)
  6 => string '�' (length=1)
  7 => string '�' (length=1)
  8 => string '�' (length=1)
  9 => string '�' (length=1)
  10 => string '�' (length=1)
  11 => string '�' (length=1)
  12 => string '�' (length=1)
  13 => string '�' (length=1)
  14 => string '�' (length=1)
  15 => string '�' (length=1)
  16 => string ',' (length=1)
  17 => string ' ' (length=1)
  18 => string 'e' (length=1)
  19 => string 'f' (length=1)
  20 => string 'g' (length=1)

But, with this code :

header('Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');  // So the browser doesn't make our lives harder
$str = "abc 文字化け, efg";

$results = array();
preg_match_all('/./u', $str, $results);
var_dump($results[0]);

(Notice the 'u' at the end of the regex)

You get what you want :

array
  0 => string 'a' (length=1)
  1 => string 'b' (length=1)
  2 => string 'c' (length=1)
  3 => string ' ' (length=1)
  4 => string '文' (length=3)
  5 => string '字' (length=3)
  6 => string '化' (length=3)
  7 => string 'け' (length=3)
  8 => string ',' (length=1)
  9 => string ' ' (length=1)
  10 => string 'e' (length=1)
  11 => string 'f' (length=1)
  12 => string 'g' (length=1)

Hope this helps :-)

Split string into array based on a unicode character range in PHP

You have to check also with a look ahead if the next character is a cyrrilic one. This code will do the job:

$t = preg_split ('/(?<=[^а-я])(?=[а-я]+)/ius', $text, NULL, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

It gives this output:

Array
(
    [0] => «
    [1] => Добрый 
    [2] => день!» - 
    [3] => сказал 
    [4] => он, 
    [5] => потянувшись…
)

Here you can try it.

Convert a String into an Array of Characters - multi-byte

Just pass an empty pattern with the PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY flag.
Otherwise, you can write a pattern with \X (unicode dot) and \K (restart fullstring match). I'll include a mb_split() call and a preg_match_all() call for completeness.

Code: (Demo)

$string='先秦兩漢';
var_export(preg_split('~~u', $string, 0, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY));
echo "\n---\n";
var_export(preg_split('~\X\K~u', $string, 0, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY));
echo "\n---\n";
var_export(preg_split('~\X\K(?!$)~u', $string));
echo "\n---\n";
var_export(mb_split('\X\K(?!$)', $string));
echo "\n---\n";
var_export(preg_match_all('~\X~u', $string, $out) ? $out[0] : []);

All produce::

array (
  0 => '先',
  1 => '秦',
  2 => '兩',
  3 => '漢',
)

From https://www.regular-expressions.info/unicode.html:

How to Match a Single Unicode Grapheme

Matching a single grapheme, whether it's encoded as a single code point, or as multiple code points using combining marks, is easy in Perl, PCRE, PHP, Boost, Ruby 2.0, Java 9, and the Just Great Software applications: simply use \X.

You can consider \X the Unicode version of the dot. There is one difference, though: \X always matches line break characters, whereas the dot does not match line break characters unless you enable the dot matches newline matching mode.

---

UPDATE, DHarman has brought to my attention that mb_str_split() is now available from PHP7.4.

The default length parameter of the new function is 1, so the length parameter can be omitted for this case.

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/mb_str_split

Dharman's demo: https://3v4l.org/M85Fi/rfc#output

Convert a String into an Array of Characters

You will want to use str_split().

$result = str_split('abcdef');

http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.str-split.php

PHP - Split String Into Arrays for every N characters

You could do something like this:

$text = 'VERY LONG STRING';
$result = [];
$partial = [];
$len = 0;

foreach(explode(' ', $text) as $chunk) {
  $chunkLen = strlen($chunk);
  if ($len + $chunkLen > 5000) {
    $result[] = $partial;
    $partial = [];
    $len = 0;
  }
  $len += $chunkLen;
  $partial[] = $chunk;
}

if ($partial) {
    $result[] = $partial;
}

You can test it more easily if you do it with a lower max length

PHP : Split a comma delimited & special symbol string into an array

Try this -

str = "your string";
$arr = explode('@', $str);
$newArray = array();
foreach ($arr as $val) {
   $temp = explode(',', $val);
   $newTemp['treatment'] = $temp[0];
   $newTemp['quantity'] = $temp[1];
   $newTemp['cost'] = $temp[2];
   $newTemp['discount'] = $temp[3];
   $newTemp['discount_type'] = "INR";
   $newTemp['total'] = $temp[4];
   $newTemp['note'] = $temp[5];
   $newArray[] = $newTemp;
   $temp = array();
}
var_dump($newArray);

How to split string with special character (�) using PHP

Take a look at mb_split:

array mb_split ( string $pattern , string $string [, int $limit = -1 ] )

Split a multibyte string using regular expression pattern and returns
the result as an array.

Like this:

$string = "a�b�k�e";
$chunks = mb_split("�", $string);
print_r($chunks);

Outputs:

Array
(
    [0] => a
    [1] => b
    [2] => k
    [3] => e
)

How to split a string character by character, , paying attention to special characters

str_split has problems with Unicode strings.

You can use the u modifier in preg_split instead

For instance:

$input = "Comment ça va?";
$letters1 = str_split($input);
$letters2 = preg_split('//u', $input, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

print_r($letters1);
print_r($letters2);

Will output

Array ( [0] => C [1] => o [2] => m [3] => m [4] => e 
        [5] => n [6] => t [7] => [8] => � [9] => � 
        [10] => a [11] => [12] => v [13] => a [14] => ? ) 

Array ( [0] => C [1] => o [2] => m [3] => m [4] => e 
        [5] => n [6] => t [7] => [8] => ç [9] => a 
        [10] => [11] => v [12] => a [13] => ? ) 

---

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