PHP preg_split, expression i curly brackets and saving the delimiters

Question

I've been struggling with this for like half a day already and I can't seem to find the answer. Please do help a noob. :)

I've got a string which consists of few sentences which are in curly brackets. It looks something like this:

{Super duper extra text.} {Awesome another text!} {And here we go again...}

Now I want to split it.

I figured out I could search for patterns like .} {, etc. So I did it like this:

$key = preg_split('/[!?.]{1,3}\} \{/',$key);

But this way I lost the delimiter, I lost all those . ! ? etc. at the end of the sentence.

I tried to do it like that:

$key = preg_split('/([!?.]{1,3}\} \{)/',$key, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
$sentences = array();

for ($i=0, $n=count($key)-1; $i<$n; $i+=2) {
$sentences[] = $key[$i].$key[$i+1]."<br><br>";
}

But this code never loads, so I gather something's wrong with it. But what?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You don't need to split this, just call preg_match() on it instead. The matched groups will result in an array. The expression grouped inside (), [^}]+ matches all characters up to, but not including, the next }. The output values you want will be inside the $matches[1] subarray.

$input = "{Super duper extra text.} {Awesome another text!} {And here we go again...}";
$matches = array();
preg_match_all('/\{([^}]+)\}/', $input, $matches);
print_r($matches);

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => {Super duper extra text.}
            [1] => {Awesome another text!}
            [2] => {And here we go again...}
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => Super duper extra text.
            [1] => Awesome another text!
            [2] => And here we go again...
        )

)

Answer 2

I doubt you need preg_split() for this. From what you describe, it sounds like:

 $array = explode('} {', trim($string, '{}'));

...will do the job.