Question

How to merge two delimiters in preg_split? For example:

$str = "this is a test , and more";
$array = preg_split('/( |,)/', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
print_r($array);

will produce an array as

Array
(
    [0] => this
    [1] =>  
    [2] => is
    [3] =>  
    [4] => a
    [5] =>  
    [6] => test
    [7] =>  
    [8] => 
    [9] => ,
    [10] => 
    [11] =>  
    [12] => and
    [13] =>  
    [14] => more
)

but I want to get

Array
(
    [0] => this
    [1] =>  
    [2] => is
    [3] =>  
    [4] => a
    [5] =>  
    [6] => test
    [7] => ,
    [8] => and
    [9] =>  
    [10] => more
)

In fact, I want to merge the array elements when two delimiters are neighbors. In other words, ignoring the first delimiter if the next part is the second delimiter.

Answer 1

Try using a character class: /[ ,]+/

The + is a quantifier meaning “1 or more”