Regular expression help preg_split()

[echos]

I'm currently working on a program to analyze the contents of log files and store them in a MySQL db. The problem I'm having at the moment is developing a regular expression to split a string into a clean array that I can use.

<?php
$string = "  7. echosx     15      16      0.9     100027  1350    -3      14152     Nod";

$array = preg_split('/ /', $string);

print_r($array); 
?>

The code uses a basic regular expression inorder to split the string by spaces. What I want to do is have it split the string by a dynamic number of spaces.

Basicly when you run the script it returns the following.

Array
(
    [0] => 
    [1] => 
    [2] => 7.
    [3] => echosx
    [4] => 
    [5] => 
    [6] => 
    [7] => 
    [8] => 15
    [9] => 
    [10] => 
    [11] => 
    [12] => 
    [13] => 
    [14] => 16
    [15] => 
    [16] => 
    [17] => 
    [18] => 
    [19] => 
    [20] => 0.9
    [21] => 
    [22] => 
    [23] => 
    [24] => 
    [25] => 100027
    [26] => 
    [27] => 1350
    [28] => 
    [29] => 
    [30] => 
    [31] => -3
    [32] => 
    [33] => 
    [34] => 
    [35] => 
    [36] => 
    [37] => 14152
    [38] => 
    [39] => 
    [40] => 
    [41] => 
    [42] => Nod
)

What I want it to return is this.

Array
(
    [0] => 7.
    [1] => echosx
    [2] => 15
    [3] => 16
    [4] => 0.9
    [5] => 100027
    [6] => 1350
    [7] => -3
    [8] => 14152
    [9] => Nod
)

[cahva]

$newarr=array_filter($array);               

$newarr=array_values($newarr);
print_r($newarr);

[echos]

That seems to work alot better than what I wrote.

<?php
$string = "  7. echosx     15      16      0.9     100027  1350    -3      14152     Nod";

$array = explode(" ", $string);

for($i = $n = 0; $i != count($array); $i++)
     {
     if($array[$i] != "")
          {
          $array2[$n] = $array[$i];
          $n++;
          }
     }

print_r($array2);
?>

[cahva]

"Little" optimization 🙂

$arr = preg_split("/\s/", $string,-1,PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

[echos]

Seems the first method appears to be faster in my test.

<?php
/******************************************************************************/
/* Ustats - New parsing engine                                                */
/******************************************************************************/
$string = "  7. echosx     15      16      0.9     100027  1350    -3      14152     Nod";

//  Start TIMER
//  -----------
$stimer = explode( ' ', microtime() );
$stimer = $stimer[1] + $stimer[0];
//  -----------
$array = array_values(array_filter(explode(" ", $string)));
//  End TIMER
//  ---------
$etimer = explode( ' ', microtime() );
$etimer = $etimer[1] + $etimer[0];
printf( "Script timer: %f seconds.\n", ($etimer-$stimer) );
//  ---------

print_r($array);

//  Start TIMER
//  -----------
$stimer2 = explode( ' ', microtime() );
$stimer2 = $stimer2[1] + $stimer2[0];
//  -----------
$array2 = preg_split("/ /", $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
//  End TIMER
//  ---------
$etimer2 = explode( ' ', microtime() );
$etimer2 = $etimer2[1] + $etimer2[0];
printf( "Script timer: %f seconds.\n", ($etimer2-$stimer2) );
//  ---------

print_r($array2);
?>

Output:

Script timer: 0.000141 seconds.
Array
(
    [0] => 7.
    [1] => echosx
    [2] => 15
    [3] => 16
    [4] => 0.9
    [5] => 100027
    [6] => 1350
    [7] => -3
    [8] => 14152
    [9] => Nod
)
Script timer: 0.000297 seconds.
Array
(
    [0] => 7.
    [1] => echosx
    [2] => 15
    [3] => 16
    [4] => 0.9
    [5] => 100027
    [6] => 1350
    [7] => -3
    [8] => 14152
    [9] => Nod
)

[cahva]

Well I got the opposite:

Script timer: 0.000096 seconds.
Array
(
    [0] => 7.
    [1] => echosx
    [2] => 15
    [3] => 16
    [4] => 0.9
    [5] => 100027
    [6] => 1350
    [7] => -3
    [8] => 14152
    [9] => Nod
)
Script timer: 0.000041 seconds.
Array
(
    [0] => 7.
    [1] => echosx
    [2] => 15
    [3] => 16
    [4] => 0.9
    [5] => 100027
    [6] => 1350
    [7] => -3
    [8] => 14152
    [9] => Nod
)