Explode text into array as per paragraph

Question

I have the following text:

$test = 'Test This is first line

Test:123

This is Test';

I want to explode this string to an array of paragraphs. I wrote the following code but it is not working:

$array = explode('\n\n', $test);

Any idea what I'm missing here?

Answer 1

You might be on Windows which uses \r\n instead of \n. You could use a regex to make it universal with preg_split():

$array = preg_split('#(\r\n?|\n)+#', $test);

Pattern explanation:

• ( : start matching group 1
• \r\n?|\n : match \r\n, \r or \n
• ) : end matching group 1
• + : repeat one or more times

If you want to split by 2 newlines, then replace + by {2,}.

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Update: you might use:

$array = preg_split('#\R+#', $test);

This extensive answer covers the meaning of \R. Note that this is only supported in PCRE/perl. So in a sense, it's less cross-flavour compatible.