Returns an array containing substrings of
subject
split along boundaries matched by
pattern
.
If limit
is specified, then only substrings up to
limit
are returned, and if
limit
is -1, it actually means "no limit", which is
useful for specifying the flags
.
flags
can be any combination of the following flags
(combined with bitwise | operator):
If this flag is set, only non-empty pieces will be returned by preg_split().
If this flag is set, parenthesized expression in the delimiter pattern will be captured and returned as well. This flag was added for 4.0.5.
If this flag is set, for every occurring match the appendant string
offset will also be returned. Note that this changes the return
value in an array where every element is an array consisting of the
matched string at offset 0 and its string offset
into subject
at offset 1.
This flag is available since PHP 4.3.0 .
Tip: If you don't need the power of regular expressions, you can choose faster (albeit simpler) alternatives like explode() or str_split().
Note: Parameter
flags
was added in PHP 4 Beta 3.
See also spliti(), split(), implode(), preg_match(), preg_match_all(), and preg_replace().