Question regarding explode

[Anon]

I am using the explode function to chop a string into pieces.

$data = "|1|2|";
$data_arr = explode("|", trim($data));

When I do this the count of the pieces is 4 with the following values.

$data[0] = ""
$data[1] = "1"
$data[2] = "2"
$data[3] = ""

can anyone explain why I get back the front and the back as blank? I don't quite understand why I wouldn't just get back a count of 2.

Thank You

[criegern]

To get the right result you have to

explode("|", "1|2");

Explode returns each element before between and after the given delimiter and not only embedded elements. There is no character before the first "|" in "|1|2|" so NULL / "" is returned. So exploding "|||" would result in NULL NULL NULL NULL.