How Can I Split a String in PHP While Preserving Quoted Words?

Preserving Words in Quotes While Splitting Strings in PHP

When you need to split a string into an array, it can be challenging if the string contains words enclosed in quotes that should remain intact. In this case, you want to explode the following string:

Lorem ipsum "dolor sit amet" consectetur "adipiscing elit" dolor

Into this array:

array("Lorem", "ipsum", "dolor sit amet", "consectetur", "adipiscing elit", "dolor")

Rather than splitting the text within the quotation marks, you can employ a preg_match_all(...) function to achieve this:

$text = 'Lorem ipsum "dolor sit amet" consectetur "adipiscing \"elit" dolor';
preg_match_all('/"(?:\\.|[^\\"])*"|\S+/', $text, $matches);

This regular expression works as follows:

• It matches either a sequence of characters enclosed in double quotes (escaped quotes are also handled).
• Or, it matches any non-whitespace character one or more times.

The resulting $matches array will contain the desired split words:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => Lorem
            [1] => ipsum
            [2] => "dolor sit amet"
            [3] => consectetur
            [4] => "adipiscing \"elit"
            [5] => dolor
        )

)

By utilizing this approach, you can effectively explode strings while preserving the integrity of quoted words.

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