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Regex help

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Join Date: Oct 2006

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Reputation: Barefootsanders is an unknown quantity at this point

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Barefootsanders Barefootsanders is offline

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Regex help

Jul 3rd, 2009

Hi all.. .I'm trying to use preg_split but I'm having trouble getting the regular expression I want.

What I have now is a long character string, upwards of 200 characters depending on user input. I'm trying to do is break up my string an array, each element in that array having 50 characters. But I dont want to use str_split because that has the possibility to break up the string in the middle of words. So I'd like to create a regular expression that will get at max 50 characters and end in a space and use the functionality of preg_split to accomplish this.

What my pattern looks like is this (and mind you I'm not all that good with regex...)

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 PHP Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
/.{1,5}(?=\s*)/
/.{1,5}(?=\s*)/

Like I said, should be any string 1-50 characters long with a space proceeding the last character.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Last edited by Barefootsanders; Jul 3rd, 2009 at 4:35 pm.

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Join Date: Apr 2005

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ShawnCplus ShawnCplus is offline

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Code Monkey

Re: Regex help

Jul 3rd, 2009

Post an example string that is to be split, guessing based on your description will produce bad results

GCS d- s+ a-->? C++(++++) UL+++ P+>+++ L+++ E--- W+++
N+ o K w++(---) O? !M- V PS+>++ PE+ Y+ PGP !t- 5? X- R tv+
b+>++ DI+ D G++>+++ e+ h+>++ r y+
PMs asking for help will not be answered, post on the forums. That's what they're there for.

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Join Date: Jun 2007

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kkeith29

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Nearly a Posting Virtuoso

Re: Regex help

Jul 3rd, 2009

I wouldn't use a regular expression for something like this. I am not the best with it and a php function to do it wouldn't be hard.

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function splitString( $data,$len=50 ) {
	$data = explode( ' ',$data );
	$result = array();
	$i = 0;
	foreach( $data as $str ) {
		$i = ( $i + strlen( $str ) + 1 );
		if ( $i <= ( $len - 1 ) ) {
			$result[] = $str;
		}
	}
	return implode( ' ',$result ) . ' ';
}
function splitString( $data,$len=50 ) {
	$data = explode( ' ',$data );
	$result = array();
	$i = 0;
	foreach( $data as $str ) {
		$i = ( $i + strlen( $str ) + 1 );
		if ( $i <= ( $len - 1 ) ) {
			$result[] = $str;
		}
	}
	return implode( ' ',$result ) . ' ';
}