Question

How can I stop explode function after certain index.
For example

    <?php
        $test="The novel Prognosis Negative by Art Vandelay expresses protest against many different things. The story covers a great deal of time and takes the reader through many different places and events, as the author uses several different techniques to really make the reader think. By using a certain type of narrative structure, Vandelay is able to grab the reader’s attention and make the piece much more effective and meaningful, showing how everything happened";

    $result=explode(" ",$test);
    print_r($result);
?>

What if want to use only first 10 elements ($result[10])
How can I stop explode function once 10 elements are filled.

One way is to first trim the string upto first 10 spaces (” “)

Is there any other way, I don’t want to store the remaining elements after limit anywhere (as done using positive limit parameter)?

Answer 1

What’s about that third parameter of the function?

array explode ( string $delimiter , string $string [, int $limit ] )

check out the $limit parameter.

Manual: http://php.net/manual/en/function.explode.php

An example from the manual:

<?php
$str = 'one|two|three|four';

// positive limit
print_r(explode('|', $str, 2));

// negative limit (since PHP 5.1)
print_r(explode('|', $str, -1));
?>

The above example will output:

Array (
[0] => one
[1] => two|three|four ) Array (
[0] => one
[1] => two
[2] => three )

In your case:

print_r(explode(" " , $test , 10));

According to the php manual , when you’re using the limit parameter:

If limit is set and positive, the returned array will contain a
maximum of limit elements with the last element containing the rest of
string.

Therefore , you need to get rid of the last element in the array.
You can do it easily with array_pop (http://php.net/manual/en/function.array-pop.php).

$result = explode(" " , $test , 10);
array_pop($result);