Convert a String into an Array in PHP

One of the most common tasks in PHP is converting a string into an array. This can be especially useful when working with CSV files or other data that is delimited by commas.

Fortunately, PHP makes it easy to split a string into an array using the explode(), split(), or preg_split() functions.

• The explode() function takes two arguments: the string to be split and the delimiter.
• The split() function is similar to explode(), except that it uses a regular expression as the delimiter.
• The preg_split() function is the same as split(), except that it uses a regular expression as the delimiter. This can be useful when you need to split a string into an array based on a specific pattern.

$fruit = 'apple,orange,banana,pear';
$fruit_array = explode(',', $fruit);
print_r($fruit_array);
/* Result: Array ( 

    0 => apple 

    1 => orange 

    2 => banana 

    3 => pear 

) */

$color = 'red|green|blue';
$color_array = split('\|', $color); // Note: must escape | character with \  
print_r($color_array);    

$columns = "ID,Name,Age,Email,Username";  
$columnsArray = preg_split("/\,/", $columns);