Question

I would like to use regex in php to separate words and phrases out of a string. The phrases would be separated by quotes, both double and single. The regular expression would also have to take in consideration single quotes within words (ie nation’s).

Example string:

The nation's economy 'is really' poor, but "might be getting" better.

I would like php to separate this type of string into an array using a regex as follows:

Array
(
    [0] => "The"
    [1] => "nation's"
    [2] => "economy"
    [3] => "is really"
    [4] => "poor"
    [5] => "but"
    [6] => "might be getting"
    [7] => "better"

)

What would the php code be to accomplish this? Thanks.

Answer 1

Use preg_match_all on the regex:

(?<![\w'"])(?:['"][^'"]+['"]|[\w']+)(?![\w'"])

Example: http://www.ideone.com/SiG0V

preg_match_all(
  '/(?<![\w\'"])(?:[\'"][^\'"]+[\'"]|[\w\']+)(?![\w\'"])/', 
  "The nation's economy 'is really' poor, but \"might be getting\" better.",
  $matches
);

print_r($matches[0]);

(Note that this doesn’t recognize hy-phe-nat-ed words as it is not specified in the question.)