preg_split - returning only the first two substrings

[geckofuel]

Say I've got this string:

$sports="basketball,football,hockey,lacrosse,cricket";

Now say that I want to do a preg_split to return only the first two elements of this list "basketball football" How do I do it?

This is what I tried:

return preg_split (',', $sports, 2);

But it returned:

"basketball football hockey,lacrosse,cricket"

Any ideas?

[RobinC]

You're telling it you only want to split the first two - [uk2.php.net ], try leaving out the limit and it should work as you want.

Robin

[coopster]

list($value1, $value2) = explode(',', $string);

[Xuefer]

list($value1, $value2) = explode(',', $string, 2);

[coopster]

This won't work Xuefer, you can't include the last parameter, limit. If limit is set, the returned array will contain a maximum of limit elements with the last element containing the rest of the string.

It would return:

print $value1; // basketball 
print $value2; // football,hockey,lacrosse,cricket 

Note, the same thing would occur if you used

preg_split

, even without the last parameter. The key here is twofold:

1. Use the list [us3.php.net] language construct
   
2. Do NOT specify the limit parameter (or if you do, make sure it is at least 1 larger than the total number of values you want returned).

You could use either function, explode or preg_split in this manner to achieve the results desired.

[jamesa]

Off the top of my head (so check the syntax):

$sports="basketball,football,hockey,lacrosse,cricket";

preg_match("/^([^,]+),([^,]+)/", $sports, $matches);

$first_two = $matches[1] . " " . $matches[2];

-- or --

$allsports = explode($sports);

$first_two = $allsports[0] . " " . $allsports[1];

[Xuefer]

hrm,.. it was i misunderstanding
list($value1, $value2) = explode(',', $string, 3);
this should be the fastest way
using regexp