Explode String by Comma and again with space

Question

I have a string of numbers, like so:

$numbers = "one, two, three four, five";

I first explode it by comma:

$numbers_array = explode(",", $numbers);

My result is:

array(4) {
  [0] => string(3)  "one"
  [1] => string(4)  " two"
  [2] => string(11) " three four"
  [3] => string(5)  " five"
}

My question is, how can I achieve this?

array(5) { 
  [0] => string(3) "one" 
  [1] => string(4) "two" 
  [2] => string(6) "three" 
  [3] => string(5) "four" 
  [4] => string(5) "five"
}

Does this answer your question? [How can I explode and trim whitespace?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19347005/how-can-i-explode-and-trim-whitespace) — Melvin, Jan 17 '21 at 16:23

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 17 '21 at 13:47

1

This should split your code on spaces and commas:

$numbers = "one, two, three four, five";

$numbers_array = preg_split("/[\s,]+/", $numbers);

You can then remove empty items by doing:

$filtered_numbers_array = array_filter($numbers_array);

answered Jan 17 '21 at 13:47

Jolan

364
1
10

that works! do you have any idea, if i have also an empty value that I want to keep? e.x: one, two, three, , four five, six? – zagzter Jan 17 '21 at 13:56
I'm sorry, I don't really understand what you mean – Jolan Jan 17 '21 at 14:04
your last comment worked! you get it right (but not removing space) :/ – zagzter Jan 17 '21 at 14:04
You can use the flag PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY. If this flag is set, only non-empty pieces will be returned by preg_split(). – jspit Jan 17 '21 at 19:01

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 17 '21 at 14:31

$numbers = "one, two, three four, five,";
$numbers_array = explode(",", $numbers);
$result = [];

foreach($numbers_array as $num){
  $result[] = trim($num);
}

Result:

array (
  0 => 'one',
  1 => 'two',
  2 => 'three four',
  3 => 'five'
)

And this way you can keep your empty item too.

Explode String by Comma and again with space

2 Answers2