PHP - Speperate string into sections

Question

I have a string:

2014-12-06 01:08:14 Andrew (76561198093241035) killed Moraiti () with weapon hgun_PDW2000_F

I need to be able to seperate this string into its seperate parts like so:

2014-12-06 01:08:14
Andrew
(76561198093241035)
Moraiti
hgun_PDW2000_F

The problem is I don't exactly how many characters each item will have. Is this even possible?

That's a little bit complicated if you don't have a 'blacklist' of words or something like that to detect where to split the string! — Rizier123, Dec 06 '14 at 19:33
What would if I told you that it would always begin with a data timestamp like so `2014-12-06 01:08:14` And `(76561198093241035)` would always be 19 characters long. And the words `Killed` `with` `weapon` would never change — Ricky Barnett, Dec 06 '14 at 19:39
It would help do get the first string but not the other ones! because you need a pattern to detect/ say where to split the string! — Rizier123, Dec 06 '14 at 19:40

Salman A · Answer 1 · 2014-12-06T19:49:55.533

1

You can use regular expressions:

$pat = '/^(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2} \d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}) (.+?) (\((?:\d{17}|)\)) killed (.+?) (\((?:\d{17}|)\)) with weapon (.+)$/';
$str = '2014-12-06 01:08:14 Andrew (76561198093241035) killed Moraiti () with weapon hgun_PDW2000_F';
preg_match($pat, $str, $matches);
var_dump($matches);

array(7) {
  [0]=>
  string(91) "2014-12-06 01:08:14 Andrew (76561198093241035) killed Moraiti () with weapon hgun_PDW2000_F"
  [1]=>
  string(19) "2014-12-06 01:08:14"
  [2]=>
  string(6) "Andrew"
  [3]=>
  string(19) "(76561198093241035)"
  [4]=>
  string(7) "Moraiti"
  [5]=>
  string(2) "()"
  [6]=>
  string(14) "hgun_PDW2000_F"
}

edited Dec 06 '14 at 19:49

answered Dec 06 '14 at 19:40

Salman A

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If match failed then `$matches` would be an empty array, not NULL. Can you post the string that failed? – Salman A Dec 06 '14 at 21:18
Never mind, I was trying to pass in an array of strings. Thanks! – Ricky Barnett Dec 06 '14 at 21:22

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

You could also use explode to convert the string into an array. With the string you specified, you would use a space as the delimiter and then you could get the various elements of the array.

Example:

$str = '2014-12-06 01:08:14 Andrew (76561198093241035) killed Moraiti () with weapon hgun_PDW2000_F';
$array = explode(' ', $str);

echo $array[0].' '.$array[1].PHP_EOL;
echo $array[2].PHP_EOL;
echo $array[3].PHP_EOL;
echo $array[5].PHP_EOL;
echo $array[9].PHP_EOL;

Result:

2014-12-06 01:08:14

Andrew

(76561198093241035)

Moraiti

hgun_PDW2000_F

If you want to use other parts of the array, use var_dump($array); to figure out which ones,

PHP - Speperate string into sections

2 Answers2