title: How to split a long string with PHP?
body: <p>I am currently looking into spliting a very long string that could contain HTML characteristics.</p>
  
  <p>Once example is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Thiiiissssaaaveryyyylonnngggstringgg
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>For this I have used this function in the past:</p>
  
  <pre><code>function split($sString, $iCount = 75)
  {       
      $text = $sString;
      $new_text = '';
      $text_1 = explode('&gt;',$text);
      $sizeof = sizeof($text_1);
      for ($i=0; $i&lt;$sizeof; ++$i) {
          $text_2 = explode('&lt;',$text_1[$i]);
          if (!empty($text_2[0])) {
  
                  $new_text .= preg_replace('#([^\n\r .]{'. $iCount .'})#iu', '\\1  ', $text_2[0]);
          }
          if (!empty($text_2[1])) {
              $new_text .= '&lt;' . $text_2[1] . '&gt;';
          }
      }
      return $new_text; }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The function works to pick up such characters and split them after X characters. The problem is when HTML or ASCII characters are mixed in there like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Thissssiisss&lt;a href="#"&gt;lonnnggg&lt;/a&gt;sting&amp;#228;&amp;#228;&amp;#228;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have been trying to figure out how to split this string above and to not count characters within HTML tags and to count each ASCII character as 1.</p>
  
  <p>Any help would be great.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you</p>