Split text string into $first and $last name in php

Question

I'm developing a private message system that allows users to search for a user by their full name, e.g.: "George Washington".

I have two variables named $firstname and $lastname, and the search function orders results by relevancy (how many times you have messaged that person). How do I get a text field to split "George Washington" into $firstname="George" and $lastname="Washington"?

Answer 1

The simplest way is, by using explode:

$parts = explode(" ", $name); 

After you have the parts, pop the last one as $lastname:

$lastname = array_pop($parts); 

Finally, implode back the rest of the array as your $firstname:

$firstname = implode(" ", $parts); 

example:

$name = "aaa bbb ccc ddd";  $parts = explode(" ", $name); if(count($parts) > 1) {     $lastname = array_pop($parts);     $firstname = implode(" ", $parts); } else {     $firstname = $name;     $lastname = " "; }  echo "Lastname: $lastname\n"; echo "Firstname: $firstname\n"; 

Would result:

tomatech:~ ariefbayu$ php ~/Documents/temp/test.php  Lastname: ddd Firstname: aaa bbb ccc