PHP extract string between delimiters allow duplicates -

i'm trying text between 2 delimiters , save array. wrote function, problem code removes duplicates

$this->getinnersubstring('{2}{a}{a}{a}{x}','{', '}'); 

returns array

[0] =>2, [1]=>a, [2] =>x , 

yet want:

[0] =>2, [1]=>a, [2]=>a, [3]=>a, [4] =>x, 

without regex patterns there substr flag lets me keep duplicates? what's best approach here:

function getinnersubstring($string,$start, $end){     $s = array();                  {              $startpos = strpos($string, $start) + strlen($start);              $endpos = strpos($string, $end, $startpos);              $s[] = substr($string, $startpos, $endpos - $startpos);                 //remove entire occurance string:                 $string =   str_replace(substr($string, strpos($string, $start), strpos($string, $end) +strlen($end)), '', $string);           }     while (strpos($string, $start)!== false && strpos($string, $end)!== false);       return $s;      } 

use preg_match_all() that:

$string = "{2}{a}{a}{a}{x}"; $ldelim = "{"; $rdelim = "}";  var_dump(getinnersubstring($string, $ldelim, $rdelim));  function getinnersubstring($string, $ldelim, $rdelim) {     $pattern = "/" . preg_quote($ldelim) . "(.*?)" . preg_quote($rdelim) . "/";     preg_match_all($pattern, $string, $matches);     return $matches[1]; } 

output:

array(5) {   [0]=>   string(1) "2"   [1]=>   string(1) "a"   [2]=>   string(1) "a"   [3]=>   string(1) "a"   [4]=>   string(1) "x" } 

---

an alternative use preg_split():

var_dump(preg_split('({|})', $string, -1, preg_split_no_empty)); 

you can put function using same way above.