PHP: Result of chunk_split as Array

The function chunk_split() always returns a string, but you can easily write your own function that is returning an array instead.

For example, such a function can look like that:

function chunk_split_arr($str, $chunklen) {
   $res = array();
   $k = ceil(strlen($str) / $chunklen);
   for($i = 0; $i < $k; $i++) {
      $res[] = substr($str, $i * $chunklen, $chunklen);
   }
   return $res;	
}

You can use this function in the following way in order to split the string "ABCDEFG" into parts with a length of 3 characters:

$s = 'ABCDEFG';

$arr = chunk_split_arr($s, 3);

var_dump($arr);

// result:
//
// array(3) {
//   [0]=> string(3) "ABC"
//   [1]=> string(3) "DEF"
//   [2]=> string(3) "GHI"
// }

In this function, first of all, we are calculating the number of expected parts and after that we are going through the parts with using substr() in order to cut out the corresponding substring to be able to add this string to the resulting array.
2015-07-13 at 22:55

Another possibility is to use chunk_split() in combination with explode().

I will give you a small example of this approach without using a function:

$s = 'ABCDEFGHI';
$chunklen = 3;

$s = chunk_split($s, $chunklen, '|');
$s = substr($s, 0, -1);
$arr = explode('|', $s);

And here is the same packed into a function:

function chunk_split_arr($str, $chunklen) {
  $s = chunk_split($str, $chunklen, '|');
  $s = substr($s, 0, -1);
  return explode('|', $s);
}

You can use the function chunk_split_arr() in the same way as it is described by my previous speaker.

We are using chunk_split() and we are splitting our string with the delimiter character "|". After that, we have to remove the last character with substr(), because otherwise we will get one part too much and the result. At the end, we are using explode() in order to divide the string at the delimiter and we are getting an array.

Of course, it is very important to use a character as delimiter which is not occurring otherwise within the string, because if so, explode() would also separate the string at this unintentional position.
2015-07-13 at 23:24