Better way to convert string with multiple spaces into array [duplicate] - php

Question

This question already has answers here:
How can I explode a string by more than one space, but not by exactly one space in php
(2 answers)
Closed 8 months ago.
I am reading from files and each line has multiple spaces. Example:
$line = 'Testing Area 1 10x10';
I need to convert it into array with 3 elements only so I can save it to a table. Final output should be like this:
$final_array = array('Testing Area', '1', '10x10');
This is how I'm doing it so far:
// read by line
foreach(explode(PHP_EOL, $contents) as $line) {
// split line by 2 spaces coz distance between `1` and `10x10` is atleast 2 spaces
$arr = explode(' ', $line);
// But because `Testing Area` and `1` has so many spaces between them,
// exploding the $line results to empty elements.
// So I need to create another array for the final output.
$final_array = array();
// loop through $arr to check if value is empty
// if not empty, push to $final array
foreach ($arr as $value) {
if (!empty($value)) {
array_push($final_array, $value);
}
}
// insert into table the elements of $final_array according to its column
}
Is there a better way to do this instead of looping through the array and checking each element if it's empty?
Take note that I have multiple files to read, each containing atleast 200 lines like that.

Answer 1

Use preg_split(), with 2 or more spaces as the delimiter.
$array = preg_split('/\s{2,}/', $line);

Answer 2

Assuming the criteria for splitting be two or more spaces, we can try using preg_split here:
$line = 'Testing Area 1 10x10';
$final_array = preg_split("/\s{2,}/", $line);
print_r($final_array);
This prints:
Array
(
[0] => Testing Area
[1] => 1
[2] => 10x10
)