Question

I have a plain text journal I’m trying to format in php. I’d like to split each entry into an array containing date and text.

Using preg_split I can do this, however it removes the date altogether!

The txt file looks something like this:

2012-01-28

text text text

2012-01-14

some other text

2011-12-07

a previous entry

etc.

Answer 1

the PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE flag will prevent your dates from being removed when you split, as long as the date is parenthesized in your pattern string. e.g.:

$array = preg_split('/(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2})/', $text, null, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);

Now your dates are in the odd indices of the array and your content is in the even indices.