extracting the first word of a string using php

Question

I want to split a string into two variables, the first word and the rest of the string. The first word is only ever going to be one of 4 different words.

$string = explode (' ', $string, 2);
$word = $string[0];
$string = $string[1];

The above seems like it works, but I'm wondering if there is a better way.

Answer 1

There are many ways you can do it. Using regular expressions, using strtok(), etc. Using explode() the way you are doing is quite fine.

Answer 2

You can use list():

list($word, $string) = explode (' ', $string, 2);

But it is already fine. Regular expressions would be overkill in this case.

Answer 3

list($word, $string) = explode(' ', $a, 2);