Problems with str_split - php

Question

I'm new here, and I have a question. I'm doing a code that I'll use soon, more something left me with a huge doubt. So I'm separating the word more special characters converted are being separated, I wish they would get together to assign a color to each then is there any way to do this?
Code:
<?php
$text = "My nickname is: п€Яd Øwп€d"; #this would be the result of what i received via post
print_r(str_split($text));
?>
Result:
Array
(
[0] => M
[1] => y
[2] =>
[3] => n
[4] => i
[5] => c
[6] => k
[7] => n
[8] => a
[9] => m
[10] => e
[11] =>
[12] => i
[13] => s
[14] => :
[15] =>
[16] => &
[17] => #
[18] => 1
[19] => 0
[20] => 8
[21] => 7
[22] => ;
[23] => &
[24] => e
[25] => u
[26] => r
[27] => o
[28] => ;
[...]
)
I'd like to return this:
Array ( [0] => M
[1] => y
[2] =>
[3] => n
[4] => i
[5] => c
[6] => k
[7] => n
[8] => a
[9] => m
[10] => e
[11] =>
[12] => i
[13] => s
[14] => :
[15] =>
[16] => п
[17] => €
[...]
)
Thank you for the help.
[UPDATED]
I tested the functions that friends have passed, most don't use utf-8 as my default charset ISO-8859-1, and one more thing I forgot to add, by editing the phrase "My nickname is:" and adding a & for example: "My nickname is & personal name" returns a bug. I appreciate who can help again.

Answer 1

You can try to write your own str_split, which could look like the following
function str_split_encodedTogether($text) {
$result = array();
$length = strlen($text);
$tmp = "";
for ($charAt=0; $charAt < $length; $charAt++) {
if ($text[ $charAt ] == '&') {//beginning of special char
$tmp = '&';
} elseif ($text[ $charAt ] == ';') {//end of special char
array_push($result, $tmp.';');
$tmp = "";
} elseif (!empty($tmp)) {//in midst of special char
$tmp .= $text[ $charAt ];
} else {//regular char
array_push($result, $text[ $charAt ]);
}
}
return $result;
}
Basically what it does is check if the current character is a &, if so, save all following characters (including ampersand) in $tmp until ;. This basically gives you the wanted result but will fail, whenever there is a & which doesn't belong to an encoded character.

Answer 2

Use preg_split():
<?php
$text = "My nickname is: п€Яd Øwп€d"; #this would be the result of what i received via post
print_r(preg_split('/(\&(?=[^;]*\s))|(\&[^;]*;)|/', $text, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE + PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY));
?>