How to explode array by multiple delimiter characters

Question

I have a string like this:

abc=1&def=abc||abc=xyz&xyz=1

How can I explode it by the & and || characters?

for eg in this case the array should be

[0] => 'abc=1'
[1] => 'def=abc'
[2] => 'abc=xyz'
[3] => 'xyz=1'

Answer 1

Use preg_split:

$str = 'abc=1&def=abc||abc=xyz&xyz=1';
$arr = preg_split('#(&|[\|]{2})#', $str);
var_dump($arr);

will produce

array
  0 => string 'abc=1' (length=5)
  1 => string 'def=abc' (length=7)
  2 => string 'abc=xyz' (length=7)
  3 => string 'xyz=1' (length=5)

Answer 2

parse_str(str_replace('||','&',$str),$arr);