# split

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

split — Split string into array by regular expression

### Description

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

Splits a `string` into array by regular expression.

### Parameters

`pattern`

  Case sensitive 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.

`string`

  The input string.

`limit`

  If `limit` is set, the returned array will contain a maximum of `limit` elements with the last element containing the whole rest of `string` .

### Return Values

Returns an array of strings, each of which is a substring of `string` formed by splitting it on boundaries formed by the case-sensitive regular expression `pattern` .

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. If an error occurs, split() returns `FALSE`.

### Examples

Example#1 split() example

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

`<?php
list($user, $pass, $uid, $gid, $extra) =
split(":", $passwd_line, 5);
?>`

Example#2 split() example

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

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

### Notes

Tip

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

Tip

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

### See Also

- preg_split()
- spliti()
- str_split()
- explode()
- implode()
- chunk_split()
- wordwrap()