What is the best way to split a string into an array of Unicode characters in PHP?

Question

In PHP, what is the best way to split a string into an array of Unicode characters? If the input is not necessarily UTF-8?

I want to know whether the set of Unicode

Answer 1

If for some reason the regex way isn't enough for you. I once wrote the Zend_Locale_UTF8 which is abandoned but might be helping you if you decide to do it on your own.

In particular have a look at the class Zend_Locale_UTF8_PHP5_String which reads in Unicode strings and to work with them splits them up into single chars(which may consist out of multiple bytes obviously).

EDIT: I just relaized that ZF's svn-browser is down so I copied the important methods for convenience:

/**
 * Returns the UTF-8 code sequence as an array for any given $string.
 *
 * @access protected
 * @param string|integer $string
 * @return array
 */
protected function _decode( $string ) {

    $string     = (string) $string;
    $length     = strlen($string);
    $sequence   = array();

    for ( $i=0; $i<$length; ) {
        $bytes      = $this->_characterBytes($string, $i);
        $ord        = $this->_ord($string, $bytes, $i);

        if ( $ord !== false )
            $sequence[] = $ord;

        if ( $bytes === false )
            $i++;
        else
            $i  += $bytes;
    }

    return $sequence;

}

/**
 * Returns the UTF-8 code of a character.
 *
 * @see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8#Description
 * @access protected
 * @param string $string
 * @param integer $bytes
 * @param integer $position
 * @return integer
 */
protected function _ord( &$string, $bytes = null, $pos=0 )
{
    if ( is_null($bytes) )
        $bytes = $this->_characterBytes($string);

    if ( strlen($string) >= $bytes ) {

        switch ( $bytes ) {
            case 1:
                return ord($string[$pos]);
                break;

            case 2:
                return  ( (ord($string[$pos])   & 0x1f) << 6 ) +
                        ( (ord($string[$pos+1]) & 0x3f) );
                break;

            case 3:
                return  ( (ord($string[$pos])   & 0xf)  << 12 ) + 
                        ( (ord($string[$pos+1]) & 0x3f) << 6 ) +
                        ( (ord($string[$pos+2]) & 0x3f) );
                break;

            case 4:
                return  ( (ord($string[$pos])   & 0x7)  << 18 ) + 
                        ( (ord($string[$pos+1]) & 0x3f) << 12 ) + 
                        ( (ord($string[$pos+1]) & 0x3f) << 6 ) +
                        ( (ord($string[$pos+2]) & 0x3f) );
                break;

            case 0:
            default:
                return false;
        }
    }

    return false;
}
/**
 * Returns the number of bytes of the $position-th character.
 *
 * @see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8#Description
 * @access protected
 * @param string $string
 * @param integer $position
 */
protected function _characterBytes( &$string, $position = 0 ) {
    $char       = $string[$position];
    $charVal    = ord($char);

    if ( ($charVal & 0x80) === 0 )
        return 1;

    elseif ( ($charVal & 0xe0) === 0xc0 )
        return 2;

    elseif ( ($charVal & 0xf0) === 0xe0 )
        return 3;

    elseif ( ($charVal & 0xf8) === 0xf0)
        return 4;
    /*
    elseif ( ($charVal & 0xfe) === 0xf8 )
        return 5;
    */

    return false;
}

Answer 2

Slightly simpler than preg_match_all:

preg_split('//u', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY)

This gives you back a 1-dimensional array of characters. No need for a matches object.

Answer 3

You could use the 'u' modifier with PCRE regex ; see Pattern Modifiers (quoting) :

u (PCRE8)

This modifier turns on additional functionality of PCRE that is incompatible with Perl. Pattern strings are treated as UTF-8. This modifier is available from PHP 4.1.0 or greater on Unix and from PHP 4.2.3 on win32. UTF-8 validity of the pattern is checked since PHP 4.3.5.

For instance, considering this code :

header('Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');  // So the browser doesn't make our lives harder
$str = "abc 文字化け, efg";

$results = array();
preg_match_all('/./', $str, $results);
var_dump($results[0]);

You'll get an unusable result:

array
  0 => string 'a' (length=1)
  1 => string 'b' (length=1)
  2 => string 'c' (length=1)
  3 => string ' ' (length=1)
  4 => string '�' (length=1)
  5 => string '�' (length=1)
  6 => string '�' (length=1)
  7 => string '�' (length=1)
  8 => string '�' (length=1)
  9 => string '�' (length=1)
  10 => string '�' (length=1)
  11 => string '�' (length=1)
  12 => string '�' (length=1)
  13 => string '�' (length=1)
  14 => string '�' (length=1)
  15 => string '�' (length=1)
  16 => string ',' (length=1)
  17 => string ' ' (length=1)
  18 => string 'e' (length=1)
  19 => string 'f' (length=1)
  20 => string 'g' (length=1)

But, with this code :

header('Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');  // So the browser doesn't make our lives harder
$str = "abc 文字化け, efg";

$results = array();
preg_match_all('/./u', $str, $results);
var_dump($results[0]);

(Notice the 'u' at the end of the regex)

You get what you want :

array
  0 => string 'a' (length=1)
  1 => string 'b' (length=1)
  2 => string 'c' (length=1)
  3 => string ' ' (length=1)
  4 => string '文' (length=3)
  5 => string '字' (length=3)
  6 => string '化' (length=3)
  7 => string 'け' (length=3)
  8 => string ',' (length=1)
  9 => string ' ' (length=1)
  10 => string 'e' (length=1)
  11 => string 'f' (length=1)
  12 => string 'g' (length=1)

Hope this helps :-)

Answer 4

I was able to write a solution using mb_*, including a trip to UTF-16 and back in a probably silly attempt to speed up string indexing:

$japanese2 = mb_convert_encoding($japanese, "UTF-16", "UTF-8");
$length = mb_strlen($japanese2, "UTF-16");
for($i=0; $i<$length; $i++) {
    $char = mb_substr($japanese2, $i, 1, "UTF-16");
    $utf8 = mb_convert_encoding($char, "UTF-8", "UTF-16");
    print $utf8 . "\n";
}

I had better luck avoiding mb_internal_encoding and just specifying everything at each mb_* call. I'm sure I'll wind up using the preg solution.

Answer 5

function str_split_unicode($str, $l = 0) {
    if ($l > 0) {
        $ret = array();
        $len = mb_strlen($str, "UTF-8");
        for ($i = 0; $i < $len; $i += $l) {
            $ret[] = mb_substr($str, $i, $l, "UTF-8");
        }
        return $ret;
    }
    return preg_split("//u", $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
}
var_dump(str_split_unicode("لأآأئؤة"));

output:

array (size=7)
  0 => string 'ل' (length=2)
  1 => string 'أ' (length=2)
  2 => string 'آ' (length=2)
  3 => string 'أ' (length=2)
  4 => string 'ئ' (length=2)
  5 => string 'ؤ' (length=2)
  6 => string 'ة' (length=2)

for more information : http://php.net/manual/en/function.str-split.php

Answer 6

the best way for split with length: I just changed laravel str_limit() function:

    public static function split_text($text, $limit = 100, $end = '')
{
    $width=mb_strwidth($text, 'UTF-8');
    if ($width <= $limit) {
        return $text;
    }
    $res=[];
    for($i=0;$i<=$width;$i=$i+$limit){
        $res[]=rtrim(mb_strimwidth($text, $i, $limit, '', 'UTF-8')).$end;
    }
     return $res;
}