preg_split Split string by a regular expression &reftitle.description; arraypreg_split stringpattern stringsubject intlimit-1 intflags0 Split the given string by a regular expression. &reftitle.parameters; pattern The pattern to search for, as a string. subject The input string. limit If specified, then only substrings up to limit are returned with the rest of the string being placed in the last substring. A limit of -1, 0 or &null; means "no limit" and, as is standard across PHP, you can use &null; to skip to the flags parameter. flags flags can be any combination of the following flags (combined with the | bitwise operator): PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY If this flag is set, only non-empty pieces will be returned by preg_split. PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE If this flag is set, parenthesized expression in the delimiter pattern will be captured and returned as well. PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE If this flag is set, for every occurring match the appendant string offset will also be returned. Note that this changes the return value in an array where every element is an array consisting of the matched string at offset 0 and its string offset into subject at offset 1. &reftitle.returnvalues; Returns an array containing substrings of subject split along boundaries matched by pattern. &reftitle.changelog; &Version; &Description; 4.3.0 The PREG_SPLIT_OFFSET_CAPTURE was added 4.0.5 The PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE was added &reftitle.examples; ]]> &example.outputs; hypertext [1] => language [2] => programming ) ]]> ]]> &example.outputs; s [1] => t [2] => r [3] => i [4] => n [5] => g ) ]]> ]]> &example.outputs; Array ( [0] => hypertext [1] => 0 ) [1] => Array ( [0] => language [1] => 10 ) [2] => Array ( [0] => programming [1] => 19 ) ) ]]> &reftitle.notes; If you don't need the power of regular expressions, you can choose faster (albeit simpler) alternatives like explode or str_split. &reftitle.seealso; PCRE Patterns implode preg_match preg_match_all preg_replace preg_last_error