How can I put strings in an array, split by new line?

Question

I've always used this with great success:

$array = preg_split("/\r\n|\n|\r/", $string);

(updated with the final \r, thanks @LobsterMan)

You can use the explode function, using "\n" as separator:

$your_array = explode("\n", $your_string_from_db);

For instance, if you have this piece of code:

$str = "My text1\nMy text2\nMy text3";
$arr = explode("\n", $str);
var_dump($arr);

You'd get this output:

array
  0 => string 'My text1' (length=8)
  1 => string 'My text2' (length=8)
  2 => string 'My text3' (length=8)

Note that you have to use a double-quoted string, so \n is actually interpreted as a line-break.
(See that manual page for more details.)

A line break is defined differently on different platforms, \r\n, \r or \n.

Using RegExp to split the string you can match all three with \R

So for your problem:

$array = preg_split ('/$\R?^/m', $string);

That would match line breaks on Windows, Mac and Linux!

PHP already knows the current system's newline character(s). Just use the EOL constant.

explode(PHP_EOL,$string)

An alternative to Davids answer which is faster (way faster) is to use str_replace and explode.

$arrayOfLines = explode("\n",
                    str_replace(["\r\n","\n\r","\r"],"\n",$str)
            );

What's happening is:
Since line breaks can come in different forms, I str_replace \r\n, \n\r, and \r with \n instead (and original \n are preserved).
Then explode on \n and you have all the lines in an array.

I did a benchmark on the src of this page and split the lines 1000 times in a for loop and:
preg_replace took an avg of 11 seconds
str_replace & explode took an avg of about 1 second

More detail and bencmark info on my forum