Question

I’ve done some searching around and most posts are using the php explode function to separate a string and store its values into an array.

I need an efficient way to convert:

$string = "45,34,65,57,45,23,26,72,73,56";

To an array, so I can access single values using $array[3].

Is there a better method than explode?

Answer 1

$desiredPart = 3;

$num = strtok($string, ',');
$part = 1;

while ($part < $desiredPart && $num !== false) {
    $num = strtok(',');
    $part++;
}

echo $num;

This is probably the most efficient if you need to handle really long, and I mean really long, strings. For anything of the size you have posted as example, use explode.

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If your parts are all the same length, just do:

$desiredPart = 3;
$partLength = 2;
$num = substr($string, ($partLength + 1) * ($desiredPart - 1), $partLength);