How to wrap only words in spans php? - php

Question

I have a text string mixed with html and need to separate words only and wrap them in spans.
String:
$string ='<div class="something">What </div> if it it is is same <div style="color:red;">same </div>';
desired output
<div class="something">
<span class="splits split1">
What
</span>
</div>
<span class="splits split2">
if
</span>
<span class="splits split3">
it
</span>
<span class="splits split4">
it
</span>
<span class="splits split5">
is
</span>
<span class="splits split6">
is
</span>
<span class="splits split7">
same
</span>
<div style="color:red;">
<span class="splits split8">
same
</span>
</div>
I tried everything I could think of, preg_replace with word boundary, preg_match , str_replace, combos with explodes , loops and replace, but one way or another the output fails and brakes the html or it adds replacement where it should not be.
Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

As #MarcB said, here with DOM life is tastier but since question is tagged regex this could be a workaround (not %100 guaranteed though):
</?\b[^<>]+>(*SKIP)(*F)|\w+
PHP:
preg_replace_callback('~</?\b[^<>]+>(*SKIP)(*F)|\w+~', function($matches) {
static $counter = 0;
return "<span class=\"splits split".(++$counter)."\">{$matches[0]}</span>";
}, $string);
Live demo