正则表达式允许一个或多个单词允许一个空格并使用两个或更多空格作为列

Question

i am trying to parse some files line by line and trying to identify it as columns. Two columns that are consecutive are words, but the separation pattern is more than one space. As the columns can have spaces between, i am having some trouble separating these two.

Examples of lines:

2236        ARGEMIRO PATROCINIO                                   ARGEMIRO                 I       I          UBC            3,8462

1150721     ZACHARY F CONDON                                      ZACH CONDON               I       I          FINTAGE        8,3333

50300       COMERCIAL FONOGRAFICA RGE LTDA.                                                 PF      LI         ABRAMUS       25,0000`

(fixed)

obs.: it's not showing all the spaces between '2236', 'ARGEMIRO PATROCINIO', 'ARGEMIRO', 'I', 'I', 'UBC' and '3,8462'

I am using this regex:

(\d+)\s+([\.a-zA-Z\s,'À-úÀ-ÿ()\?\-\/\d]+)\s{2,}([\.a-zA-Z\s,'À-úÀ-ÿ()\?\-\/\d]+)\s{2,}(I|PF|MA)\s{2,}(I|PF|PL|LI|MA|CV|MJ)\s{2,}(\w+)\s{2,}(\d+,\d{4})

but unfortunately, "ARGEMIRO PATROCINIO" is coming with the second "ARGEMIRO"; "ZACHARY F CONDON" with the second "ZACH CONDON" and on.

So,

1. how can i fix this regex to separate these two "columns"?
2. how would be another regex that can grab anything between two or more spaces within these 7 columns?

Thank you!

Answer 1

I'm not actually seeing double spaces in the data you pasted, but you are describing it as such. You can do this to split anywhere there is 2 or more sequential spaces:

preg_split("/[\s]{2,}/", $data);

DEMO: http://www.phpliveregex.com/p/jWZ (click "preg_split" on the right)