Automatically split WordPress post content in to 3 columns? - php

Question

I'm currently using the following code from this tutorial to automatically split the WordPress post content in to 2 columns. However, how would I change this code to output 3 columns instead of only 2?
functions.php code:
function content_split($text, $separator = '<hr/>', $start = false ) {
if ( $start === false) {
$start = strlen($text) / 2;
}
$lastSpace = false;
$split = substr($text, 0, $start - 1);
// if the text is split at a good breaking point already.
if (in_array(substr($text, $start - 1, 1), array(' ', '.', '!', '?'))) {
$split .= substr($text, $start, 1);
// Calculate when we should start the split
$trueStart = strlen($split);
// find a good point to break the text.
} else {
$split = substr($split, 0, $start - strlen($separator));
$lastSpace = strrpos($split, ' ');
if ($lastSpace !== false) {
$split = substr($split, 0, $lastSpace);
}
if (in_array(substr($split, -1, 1), array(','))) {
$split = substr($split, 0, -1);
}
// Calculate when we should start the split
$trueStart = strlen($split);
}
//now we know when to split the text
return substr_replace($text, $separator, $trueStart, 0);
}
index.php code:
<div class="first-column my-column">
<?php $text = get_the_content(); $separator = '</div><div class="second-column my-column">'; echo apply_filters('the_content', content_split($text,$separator)); ?>
</div>

Answer 1

function content_split($text, $separator = '<hr/>') {
$string = '';
$start = ceil(strlen($text) / 3);
$string.= substr($text,0,$start);
$string.= $separator;
$string.= substr($text,$start,$start);
$string.= $separator;
$string.= substr($text,($start*2),$start);
return $string;
}