Automatic line break with regex

Question

I have the following string: $var = "Saudi Arabia U23 x South Korea U23"; I want to divide the names that are separated by "x", I did the following:

$arr = preg_split('/[v|x]/', $var);

I used "V e X" because sometimes the string can come with a "v" separating the names, and not X, the problem is that if you have an "x" or "v" included in the name, other than the "x" or "v" of the separation, it will cut too, but I just want to separate the names delimited by " x " or " v ". How would you do it in regex?

Answer 1

Just put spaces followed by + out of square brackets:

$arr = preg_split('/ +[v|x] +/', $var);

This regex will remove the characters " x ", " v " and also those who have more than one space such as "   x " and " v    "

Answer 2

This regex solves the problem, it searches for one or more spaces followed by one v or x followed by one or more spaces.

$str = 'abc X edfxct';
$arr = preg_split('/\s+v|x\s+/i', $str);

echo "<pre>";
print_r($arr);

Exit:

Array
(
    [0] => abc 
    [1] => edfxct
)