Explode a paragraph into sentences in PHP

Question

I have been using

explode(".",$mystring)

to split a paragraph into sentences. However this doen't cover sentences that have been concluded with different punctuation such as ! ? : ;

Is there a way of using an array as a delimiter instead of a single character? Alternativly is there another neat way of splitting using various punctuation?

I tried

explode(("." || "?" || "!"),$mystring)

hopefully but it didn't work...

use regular expression to match pattern and store the value in a variable , pass that variable as parameter to explode — sree, May 08 '12 at 07:11
Take a look at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5032210/php-sentence-boundaries-detection — Boby, May 08 '12 at 07:13

Kaii · Answer 1 · 2019-08-28T14:06:58.857

You can use preg_split() combined with a PCRE lookahead condition to split the string after each occurance of ., ;, :, ?, !, .. while keeping the actual punctuation intact:

Code:

$subject = 'abc sdfs.    def ghi; this is an.email@addre.ss! asdasdasd? abc xyz';
// split on whitespace between sentences preceded by a punctuation mark
$result = preg_split('/(?<=[.?!;:])\s+/', $subject, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
print_r($result);

Result:

Array
(
    [0] => abc sdfs.
    [1] => def ghi;
    [2] => this is an.email@addre.ss!
    [3] => asdasdasd?
    [4] => abc xyz
)

You can also add a blacklist for abbreviations (Mr., Mrs., Dr., ..) that should not be split into own sentences by inserting a negative lookbehind assertion:

$subject = 'abc sdfs.   Dr. Foo said he is not a sentence; asdasdasd? abc xyz';
// split on whitespace between sentences preceded by a punctuation mark
$result = preg_split('/(?<!Mr.|Mrs.|Dr.)(?<=[.?!;:])\s+/', $subject, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
print_r($result);

Result:

Array
(
    [0] => abc sdfs.
    [1] => Dr. Foo said he is not a sentence;
    [2] => asdasdasd?
    [3] => abc xyz
)

This helped me a lot. How about if sentence ends with number, such as: "This is my test 40. But also new one." — FosAvance, Apr 07 '21 at 16:42

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited May 09 '12 at 01:42

6

You can do:

preg_split('/\.|\?|!/',$mystring);

or (simpler):

preg_split('/[.?!]/',$mystring);

edited May 09 '12 at 01:42

answered May 08 '12 at 07:13

codaddict

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1

This method removes full stops etc from the final string. – 472084 Dec 16 '13 at 09:33
1

Good solution, but doesn't work if "Mr. Smith" is in the sentence. – Victor Stoddard Jun 26 '18 at 19:49
@VictorStoddard for what it's worth - i addressed this in my answer. – Kaii Aug 28 '19 at 14:08

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered May 08 '12 at 07:14

Assuming that you actually want the punctuations marks with the end result, have you tried:

 $mystring = str_replace("?","?---",str_replace(".",".---",str_replace("!","!---",$mystring)));
 $tmp = explode("---",$mystring);

Which would leave your punctuation marks in tact.

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 08 '12 at 07:14

1

preg_split('/\s+|[.?!]/',$string);

A possible problem might be if there is an email address as it could split it onto a new line half way through.

answered May 08 '12 at 07:14

Darren Burgess

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 08 '12 at 07:12

0

Use preg_split and give it a regex like [\.|\?!] to split on

answered May 08 '12 at 07:12

Ansari

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score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Aug 28 '19 at 14:09

0

$mylist = preg_split("/[.?!:;]/", $mystring);

edited Aug 28 '19 at 14:09

Kaii

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answered May 08 '12 at 07:13

Michael Manoochehri

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score 0 · Answer 7 · edited Dec 27 '14 at 22:21

You can't have multiple delimiters for explode. That's what preg_split(); is for. But even then, it explodes at the delimiter, so you will get sentences returned without the punctuation marks. You can take preg_split a step farther and flag it to return them in their own elements with PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE and then run some loop to implode sentence and following punctation mark in the returned array, or just use preg_match_all();:

preg_match_all('~.*?[?.!]~s', $string, $sentences);

score 0 · Answer 8 · edited Aug 28 '19 at 14:09

0

You can try preg_split

$sentences = preg_split("/[.?!:;]+/", $mystring);

Please note this will remove the punctuations. If you would like to strip out leading or trailing whitespace as well

$sentences = preg_split("/[.?!:;]+\s+?/", $mystring);

edited Aug 28 '19 at 14:09

Kaii

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answered May 08 '12 at 07:15

DJ Tarazona

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Explode a paragraph into sentences in PHP

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