newbie question on Explode

TorontoMan

Description:

explode() is used to break a string into an array. The array is created by parsing the string from left to right. The first array element contains every character from the first character of the string to the first occurrence of the character(s) contained in the boundary argument. Subsequent array elements contain every character after the previous occurrence of the boundary character(s) to the next occurrence of the boundary character(s).

My question is quick.
The above says that it breaks down the string character by character.

But does it mean character by character or word by word?

This code:

$searchwords = explode(' ', $searchword);
        $needle = $searchwords[0];

Does it make searchwords into an array where each element has a character or a word?

Thanks in advance!

cahva

Explode has nothing to do with words itself. You just split a string with a string to get the array 🙂
That description you quoted is not from the manual is it?

Read it from the manual , you'll get the picture. Examples in there tells more than 1000 words 🙂

TorontoMan

no it's not from the manual.

This is from the manual

// Example 1
$pizza = "piece1 piece2 piece3 piece4 piece5 piece6";
$pieces = explode(" ", $pizza);
echo $pieces[0]; // piece1
echo $pieces[1]; // piece2

But in the above example it does have everything to do with words as every word goes into consecutive array elements.

So im confused as to how it has nothing to do with words, obviously it's about words in this example since the seperator is a whitespace. But it's mostly used for words is it not?

cahva

Well yes and no. You can use it the way you like to split string.

<?php
$str = 'Hi there!|How are you?|Whats up?';
$pieces = explode('|',$str);
print_r($pieces);
?>

Will output:

Array
(
    [0] => Hi there!
    [1] => How are you?
    [2] => Whats up?
)

So those are sentences. And the separator can be anything.

$str = "Hi there!separatorHow are you?separatorWhats up?";
$pieces = explode('separator',$str);
print_r($pieces);

That will give you the same output as before.

So when you split with space, it will give you all the words AND characters in array.
Example:

$str = 'What the #¤%& is going on?';
$pieces = explode(' ',$str);
print_r($pieces);

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => What
    [1] => the
    [2] => #¤%&
    [3] => is
    [4] => going
    [5] => on?
)

So in that theres more than just words like for example number 5: "on?" That not really a word is it because it has questionmark at the end? Or am I nitpicking? 😉 Anyway, if you really want just the words, explode will give you a start and you can process those strings to strip the unwanted characters away.

Exlode is useful for many things. LikeTo separate words as you said. Today I made a script that takes form submission and separates different customer details from copy-pasted text from openoffice calc. Its also used to make "mini-database" files.

For example a gallery which has commenting. Each picture has a textfile containing handle, comment, and date added. And each comment are on their own line. For example:

cahva|Nice picture. Wish I were there|2006-07-09 20:55:00
somedude|Yeah, very nice pic!|2006-07-09 21:05:00

That you could parse first with file() function(that will give you file as array separated by lines) and further in the loop explode those something like this:

$commentfile = file('picture32.txt');
foreach($commentfile as $comment) {
	list($nick,$comment,$date) = explode('|',$comment);
	echo '<h3>'.$nick.' on '.$date.'</h3>';
	echo '<p>'.$comment.'</p>';
}

Huh, long post yet so simple issue 🙂