How to split a long string without breaking words?

Question

I'm looking for something along the line of

str_split_whole_word($longString, $x)

Where $longString is a collection of sentences, and $x is the character length for each line. It can be fairly long, and I want to basically split it into multiple lines in the form of an array.

For example:

$longString = 'I like apple. You like oranges. We like fruit. I like meat, also.';
$lines = str_split_whole_word($longString, $x);

Desired output:

$lines = Array(
    [0] = 'I like apple. You'
    [1] = 'like oranges. We'
    [2] = and so on...
)

score 62 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 29 '12 at 00:46

62

The easiest solution is to use wordwrap(), and explode() on the new line, like so:

$array = explode( "\n", wordwrap( $str, $x));

Where $x is a number of characters to wrap the string on.

answered Jun 29 '12 at 00:46

nickb

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3

This would work great if you don't already have line breaks in the string. – JasonJensenDev Aug 03 '17 at 05:21
Perfect for CLI output of an error! Thnx – Samantha Adrichem Apr 07 '22 at 09:08
Multibyte safe version of worwrap function: https://stackoverflow.com/a/18229365/1203805 to work with non-ascii strings – userlond Apr 14 '23 at 12:22
Not working at all – Federico Schiocchet Jul 21 '23 at 16:34

Marcio Mazzucato · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-02T00:32:05.113

19

This code avoid breaking words, you won't get it using wordwrap().

The maximum length is defined using $maxLineLength. I've done some tests and it works fine.

$longString = 'I like apple. You like oranges. We like fruit. I like meat, also.';

$words = explode(' ', $longString);

$maxLineLength = 18;

$currentLength = 0;
$index = 0;

foreach ($words as $word) {
    // +1 because the word will receive back the space in the end that it loses in explode()
    $wordLength = strlen($word) + 1;

    if (($currentLength + $wordLength) <= $maxLineLength) {
        $output[$index] .= $word . ' ';
        $currentLength += $wordLength;
    } else {
        $index += 1;
        $currentLength = $wordLength;
        $output[$index] = $word;
    }
}

edited May 02 '20 at 00:32

answered Jun 29 '12 at 04:39

Marcio Mazzucato

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1

This is not correct. It removes spaces from between some words. – Stefan Sep 22 '20 at 10:02
1

Was this answer ever correct? It generates Warnings and mangles the output! https://3v4l.org/Ref5f – mickmackusa Sep 25 '20 at 07:16

score 14 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 29 '12 at 00:46

Use wordwrap() to insert the linebreaks, then explode() on those linebreaks:

// Wrap at 15 characters
$x = 15;
$longString = 'I like apple. You like oranges. We like fruit. I like meat, also.';
$lines = explode("\n", wordwrap($longString, $x));

var_dump($lines);
array(6) {
  [0]=>
  string(13) "I like apple."
  [1]=>
  string(8) "You like"
  [2]=>
  string(11) "oranges. We"
  [3]=>
  string(13) "like fruit. I"
  [4]=>
  string(10) "like meat,"
  [5]=>
  string(5) "also."
}

mickmackusa · Answer 4 · 2022-10-31T01:44:28.430

This whole task can be accomplished with just one preg_ function call instead of indirectly injecting a bunch of newlines and then splitting on those.

Match any character between zero and $maxLength times.
Forget/Release the matched characters from #1 with \K.
Match the next one or more whitespace characters or the end of the string. The characters/position matched here will be consumed in the splitting process and will not appear in the output array.
Set the preg_ function to exclude the empty element that is produced by splitting on the end of string position with PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY.

Code: (Demo)

$longString = 'I like apple. You like oranges. We like fruit. I like meat, also.';
$maxLength = 18;

var_export(
    preg_split("/.{0,{$maxLength}}\K(?:\s+|$)/", $longString, 0, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY)
);

Output:

array (
  0 => 'I like apple. You',
  1 => 'like oranges. We',
  2 => 'like fruit. I like',
  3 => 'meat, also.',
)

If your input string might contain newlines, then just add the s pattern modifier.
/.{0,{$maxLength}}\K(?:\s+|$)/s (Demo)

How to split a long string without breaking words?

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