preg_match question

[Zaggs]

Hi Guys,

I need to extract phrases / words into an array from a string. The current code I am using is shown below, but it doesn't work as intended.

Here is the output i would like to see from the folowing string:

STRING:

"technical writer" "documentation manager" "technical author"

Output should be:

<?php
Array
(
    [0] => technical writer
    [1] => documentation manager
    [2] => technical author
)
?>

STRING:

"technical writer" and "documentation manager" and "technical author"

Output should be:

<?php
Array
(
    [0] => technical writer
    [1] => and
    [2] => documentation manager
    [3] => and
    [4] => technical author
)
?>

[RvanD85]

I am not so experienced with regular expressions, but I have come up with this.
Only problem is that it puts the starting and ending space also in the array value.

preg_match_all('/[a-z\s]+/i','"technical writer" and or "documentation manager" and "technical author"',$matches);
echo '<pre>';
print_r($matches);
echo '</pre>'; 

Outputs:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => technical writer
            [1] =>  and or 
            [2] => documentation manager
            [3] =>  and 
            [4] => technical author
        )

) 

So you have to look for yourself how to fix the expression, to get rid of the spaces. Also you have to modify it to your needs offcourse.

[StarLion]

Simple answer: Dont preg_match, preg_split.

$results = preg_split('~\"(.*?)\"~',$test,-1,PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE|PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY); 

As far as removing the spaces, array_map('trim',$results);