Explode only by last delimiter

Question

is there a way to use explode function to explode only by last delimiter occurrence?

$string = "one_two_  ... _three_four";

$explodeResultArray = e         


        

Answer 1

I had similar needs and inspired by @NLZ's answer I've made a reusable function with the same features as regular explode(), but backwards (although I added an option to reverse the array order contra regular explode()):

function backward_explode($delimiter, $string, $limit = null, $keep_order = true) {
    if ((string)$delimiter === "") {
        return false;
    }

    if ($limit === 0 || $limit === 1) {
        return array($string);
    }

    $explode = explode($delimiter, $string);

    if ($limit === null || $limit === count($explode)) {
        return $keep_order? $explode : array_reverse($explode);
    }

    $parts = array();

    if ($limit > 0) {
        for ($i = 1; $i < $limit; $i++) {
            $parts[] = array_pop($explode);
        }
        $remainder = implode($delimiter, $explode);
        $parts[] = $remainder;
        if ($keep_order) {
            $parts = array_reverse($parts);
        }
    } else {
        if (strpos($string, $delimiter) === false) {
            return array();
        }
        $parts = $explode;
        array_splice($parts, 0, abs($limit));
        if (!$keep_order) {
            $parts = array_reverse($parts);
        }
    }

    return $parts;
}

(Also as a gist.)

So with:

$string = 'one two three four';
var_dump(backward_explode(' ', $string));
var_dump(backward_explode(' ', $string, 2));
var_dump(backward_explode(' ', $string, 3));
var_dump(backward_explode(' ', $string, 2, false));
var_dump(backward_explode(' ', $string, -1));
var_dump(backward_explode(' ', $string, 1)); // same as with $limit = 0
var_dump(backward_explode('#', $string, -2));
var_dump(backward_explode('', $string, 3));

We get:

array (size=4)
  0 => string 'one' (length=3)
  1 => string 'two' (length=3)
  2 => string 'three' (length=5)
  3 => string 'four' (length=4)
array (size=2)
  0 => string 'one two three' (length=13)
  1 => string 'four' (length=4)
array (size=3)
  0 => string 'one two' (length=7)
  1 => string 'three' (length=5)
  2 => string 'four' (length=4)
array (size=2)
  0 => string 'four' (length=4)
  1 => string 'one two three' (length=13)
array (size=3)
  0 => string 'two' (length=3)
  1 => string 'three' (length=5)
  2 => string 'four' (length=4)
array (size=1)
  0 => string 'one two three four' (length=18)
array (size=0)
  empty
boolean false