PHP double quote gets trimmed even when I tell it not to

Question

I created a generic function on a utility class that converts comma-separated strings to an array. The function has an optional parameter on what to trim but defaults to trimming spaces and quotes (single and double).

public function convertToArray($string, $trim = " '\"") {
    $split = array();

    if(!empty($string)) {
        $split = str_getcsv($string, ",");

        if(!empty($trim)) {
            $split = array_map(function($split) use ($trim) {
                return trim($split, $trim);
            }, $split);
        }
    }

    echo var_dump($string);
    echo var_dump($trim);
    echo var_dump($split);

    return $split;
}

On a separate file I'm calling it like this (I only want to trim spaces and keep the quotes intact):

$utility->convertToArray($keywords, " ");

---

The output for the 3 var_dump are as follows:

$string

string(21) "Finance, "Accounting""

$trim

string(1) " "

$split

array(2) {
  [0]=>
  string(7) "Finance"
  [1]=>
  string(10) "Accounting"
}

---

I expected to get string(12) ""Accounting"" but somehow the double quote is being trimmed. The function works well with single quotes though since I get string(12) "'Accounting'".

Additional Info

I'm using str_getcsv because the values could have commas within them and should not be split.

Answer 1

It happens that str_getcsv() will already remove the quotes:

$s = 'hello,"world"';
var_dump(str_getcsv($s, ','));

# array(2) {
#   [0] => string(2) "Hello"
#   [1] => string(5) "world"
# }

You could use explode() instead:

$split = explode(',', $string);

Answer 2

Use explode instead str_getcsv.

I think that will fix your troubles.

str_getcsv will treat quotes as special "enclosure" delimiters, an remove them on its own.

explode is your friend.