preg_split string into letter pairs

Question

I'm having way too much trouble with this simple problem: split a string into an array of 2-character values, i.e.

$string = 'abcdefgh';

// With the correct regex, should return ['ab','cd','ef','gh'];
$array = preg_split("/?????/",$string);

What's the darn regex?

Answer 1

Use str_split() instead.

$chunks = str_split($string, 2);

Answer 2

Hint: If you split ON the characters, you end up with an array of 4 elements that are blank

eg.

/../i

I don't think the preg_split is what you want, perhaps preg_match_all? eg.

$cnt = preg_match_all('/../i', $string, $matches);