Question

Given a string

$str= "name1 surname2, name2 midname2 surname2";

There are two persons, one has two values (name, surname) while the other has a middle name too. I want to get all of them separately while knowing which name belongs to which person, like:

foreach ($persons as person){
   if( person has midname){
       $value1 ="name"; $value2= "midname"; $value3="surname"
   }
   else
       $value1="name"; $value2="surname"   
}

Answer 1

PHP’s explode() will help you out a lot:

$str = "name1 surname2, name2 midname2 surname2";
$people = explode(',', $str);
foreach($people as $person)
{
    $names = explode(' ', $person);
    switch(count($names))
    {
        case 3:
            $value1 = $name[0];
            $value2 = $name[1];
            $value3 = $name[2];
            break;
        case 2:
        default:
            $value1 = $name[0];
            $value2 = $name[1];
            break;
    }
}

Edit

As rightly noted by dm03514: this will not work if the person has a space in any of their names (i.e. a last name of ‘De Luca’). However, this is as close as you’re going to get without some sort of restrictions or validation enforced at the source of the names.