PHP: Explode textarea lines as separate array element

Question

I have a textarea that contains phone numbers, each number in a separate line. I want to explode that string into an array using

explode("\n", $numbers);

or

explode("\r\n", $numbers);

This is not working. Please, help me. Thanks!

Schlicher

If you are so smart, tell me, what is wrong here? – Schlicher

Did you mean to write explode("\n", $numbers); or explode("\r\n", $numbers);? Or are you actually writing both statements right next to each other as a single line like that? – Swamy

You should post a little more code, the HTML form as well as a little more surrounding code. – Snoddy

explode("\r\n", $numbers); suppose to work.. well it is working for me. – Nichy

Answer 1

As the manual states: Returns an array of strings.

So you'll have to store the result. The or won't work that way either. If you don't know whether the input will contain \n or \r\n, you could do a replace to replace \r by an empty string, then explode on \n.

This should do the trick:

$numbers = explode("\n", str_replace("\r", "", $numbers));

Chartres

you're right, of course. User submitted data may not translate to the system EOL. comment withdrawn. – Swamy

Answer 2

$records = preg_split('/[\r\n]+/', $mystring, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

This should do it.

Handcraft

Answer 3

Use this

<?php

 $input = $_POST['textarea_name'];
 $new_array = array_values(array_filter(explode(PHP_EOL, $input)));

 // explode -> convert textarea to php array (that lines split by new line)
 // array_filter -> remove empty lines from array
 // array_values -> reset keys of array

?>

Nottingham