Suggestions for parsing this data - php

Question

So I have a huge file of names that has to be split into more columns for excel.
So I am using PHP to parse this, so here is part of the example:
Dr. Johnny Apple Seed
Ms. A. P. Oranges
Mrs. Purple Cup
Essentially, I want to put this into an array. I was using fopen, fget, and explode. The problem is, if I use explode, some of the arrays would not have consistent elements. For example, the first one would have a total of 4 (Dr, Johnny, Apple, Seed), the third would have only three. How would I add a fourth empty element between purple and cup? or is there a better way?
This is my code:
$fp = fopen($filename,"r");
if ($fp) {
while (!feof($fp)) {
$data = fgets($fp, filesize($filename));
$contents[] = explode(" ", $data) .
}
}
fclose($fp);
echo "<pre>";
var_dump($contents);
echo "</pre>";
Desired Output:
array(4) {
[0]=>
string(4) "Mrs."
[1]=>
string(4) "Purple"
[2]=>
string(1) " "
[3]=>
string(8) "Cup"
array(4) {
[0]=>
string(3) "Dr."
[1]=>
string(6) "Johnny"
[2]=>
string(5) "Apple"
[3]=>
string(4) "Seed"

Answer 1

Try this (haven't tested but should work):
// Define the clean array
$clean_array = array();
$fp = fopen($filename,"r");
if ($fp) {
while (!feof($fp)) {
$data = fgets($fp, filesize($filename));
// use trim() on $data to avoid empty elements
$contents = explode(" ", trim($data));
if (count($contents) == '3') {
// Copy last element to new last element
$contents[] = $contents[2];
// Clear the old last element
$contents[2] = ' ';
}
$clean_array[] = $contents;
}
}
fclose($fp);
echo '<pre>';
print_r($clean_array);
echo '</pre>';
Hope this helps.

Answer 2

This should work:
<?php
$new_array = array();
$fp = fopen($filename, "r");
if ($fp) {
while (!feof($fp)) {
$data = fgets($fp, filesize($filename));
$contents[] = explode(" ", $data);
}
}
foreach ($contents as $content) {
if (count($content) != 4) {
$content[3] = $content[2];
$content[2] = " ";
$new_array[] = $content;
}
else {
$new_array[] = $content;
}
}
fclose($fp);
echo "<pre>";
var_dump($new_array);
echo "</pre>";
?>

Answer 3

If they are newlines, you can just use "\n" as the $needle

Answer 4

I used array_splice, here is my solution:
<?php
$filename = "excel-names.txt";
$fp = fopen($filename,"r");
if ($fp) {
while (!feof($fp)) {
$data = fgets($fp, filesize($filename));
$contents[] = explode(" ", $data, 4);
}
}
fclose($fp);
foreach( $contents as $a) {
$arrayCount = count($a);
if( $arrayCount == 3 ) {
array_splice($a, 2, 0, " ");
}
if( $arrayCount == 2 ) {
array_splice($a, 0, 0, " ");
array_splice($a, 2, 0, " ");
}
}
?>