How do I split a Wordpress title at the – in PHP? - php

Question

I am working on my Wordpress blog and its required to get the title of a post and split it at the "-". Thing is, its not working, because in the source its &ndash and when I look at the result on the website, its a "long minus" (–). Copying and pasting this long minus into some editor makes it a normal minus (-). I cant split at "-" nor at &ndash, but somehow it must be possible. When I created the article, I just typed "-" (minus), but somewhere it gets converted to – automatically.
Any ideas?
Thanks!

Answer 1

I think I found it. I remember that I have meet the similar problem that when I paste code in my post the quote mark transform to an em-quad one when display to readers.
I found that is in /wp-include/formatting.php line 56 (wordpress ver 3.3.1), it defined some characters need to replace
$static_characters = array_merge( array('---', ' -- ', '--', ' - ', 'xn–', '...', '``', '\'\'', ' (tm)'), $cockney );
$static_replacements = array_merge( array($em_dash, ' ' . $em_dash . ' ', $en_dash, ' ' . $en_dash . ' ', 'xn--', '…', $opening_quote, $closing_quote, ' ™'), $cockneyreplace );
and in line 85 it make an replacement
// This is not a tag, nor is the texturization disabled static strings
$curl = str_replace($static_characters, $static_replacements, $curl);

Answer 2

If you want to split a string at the "-" character, basically you must replace "-" with a space.
Try this:
$string_to_be_stripped = "my-word-test";
$chars = array('-');
$new_string = str_replace($chars, ' ', $string_to_be_stripped);
echo $new_string;
These lines splits the string at the "-". For example, if you have my-word-test, it will echo "my word test". I hope it helps.
For more information about the str_replace function click here.
If you want to do this in a WordPress style, try using filters. I suggest placing these lines in your functions.php file:
add_filter('the_title', function($title) {
$string_to_be_stripped = $title;
$chars = array('-');
$new_string = str_replace($chars, ' ', $string_to_be_stripped);
return $new_string;
})
Now, everytime you use the_title in a loop, the title will be escaped.