International PHP Conference Berlin 2025

    The IntlBreakIterator class

    (PHP 5 >= 5.5.0, PHP 7, PHP 8)

    Introduction

    A “break iterator” is an ICU object that exposes methods for locating boundaries in text (e.g. word or sentence boundaries). The PHP IntlBreakIterator serves as the base class for all types of ICU break iterators. Where extra functionality is available, the intl extension may expose the ICU break iterator with suitable subclasses, such as IntlRuleBasedBreakIterator or IntlCodePointBreakIterator.

    This class implements IteratorAggregate. Traversing an IntlBreakIterator yields non-negative integer values representing the successive locations of the text boundaries, expressed as UTF-8 code units (byte) counts, taken from the beginning of the text (which has the location 0). The keys yielded by the iterator simply form the sequence of natural numbers {0, 1, 2, …}.

    Class synopsis

    class IntlBreakIterator implements IteratorAggregate {
    /* Constants */
    public const int DONE;
    public const int WORD_NONE;
    public const int WORD_NONE_LIMIT;
    public const int WORD_NUMBER;
    public const int WORD_NUMBER_LIMIT;
    public const int WORD_LETTER;
    public const int WORD_LETTER_LIMIT;
    public const int WORD_KANA;
    public const int WORD_KANA_LIMIT;
    public const int WORD_IDEO;
    public const int WORD_IDEO_LIMIT;
    public const int LINE_SOFT;
    public const int LINE_SOFT_LIMIT;
    public const int LINE_HARD;
    public const int LINE_HARD_LIMIT;
    public const int SENTENCE_TERM;
    public const int SENTENCE_TERM_LIMIT;
    public const int SENTENCE_SEP;
    public const int SENTENCE_SEP_LIMIT;
    /* Methods */
    private __construct()
    public static createCharacterInstance(?string $locale = null): ?IntlBreakIterator
    public static createCodePointInstance(): IntlCodePointBreakIterator
    public static createLineInstance(?string $locale = null): ?IntlBreakIterator
    public static createSentenceInstance(?string $locale = null): ?IntlBreakIterator
    public static createTitleInstance(?string $locale = null): ?IntlBreakIterator
    public static createWordInstance(?string $locale = null): ?IntlBreakIterator
    public current(): int
    public first(): int
    public following(int $offset): int
    public getErrorCode(): int
    public getErrorMessage(): string
    public getLocale(int $type): string|false
    public getPartsIterator(string $type = IntlPartsIterator::KEY_SEQUENTIAL): IntlPartsIterator
    public getText(): ?string
    public isBoundary(int $offset): bool
    public last(): int
    public next(?int $offset = null): int
    public preceding(int $offset): int
    public previous(): int
    public setText(string $text): bool
    }

    Changelog

    Version Description
    8.4.0 The class constants are now typed.
    8.0.0 IntlBreakIterator implements IteratorAggregate now. Previously, Traversable was implemented instead.

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    User Contributed Notes 1 note

    up
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    SenseException
    11 years ago
    Since there is no excample for the usage of the IntlBreakIterator yet, I made a small one:

    <?php

    $text     = "Si contano i danni. Un morto a Roma, un treno ".
    "deragliato e quattro feriti a Foggia, strade chiuse in tutto ".
    "il sud, allagamenti e danni sulla costa ionica. A Pescara, ".
    "1.500 sfollati per l'esondazione del Fosso Vallelunga. ".
    "Dall'inizio dell'anno l'agricoltura ha subito un miliardo ".
    "di euro di danni.";

    $locale = 'it_IT';

    $i = IntlBreakIterator::createSentenceInstance($locale);
    $i->setText($text);

    foreach(    $i->getPartsIterator() as $sentence) {
    echo     $sentence . PHP_EOL . '----- next -----' . PHP_EOL;
    }

    ?>

    Result:

    Si contano i danni.
    ----- next -----
    Un morto a Roma, un treno deragliato e quattro feriti a Foggia, strade chiuse in tutto il sud, allagamenti e danni sulla costa ionica.
    ----- next -----
    A Pescara, 1.500 sfollati per l'esondazione del Fosso Vallelunga.
    ----- next -----
    Dall'inizio dell'anno l'agricoltura ha subito un miliardo di euro di danni.
    ----- next -----
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