php preg_match finding string between two patters

Question

I have this string:

1 x red 1 x blue 3 x yellow

and I want to turn it into:

1 x red
1 x blue
3 x yellow

How can I do this please? I have tried using php preg_match but no luck

$description = "1 x red 1 x blue 3 x yellow";
preg_match('/[0-9] x (.*?){[0-9] x /',$description,$matches);
var_dump($matches);

Answer 1

I'd use preg_match_all() and then just provide the pattern for a single entity:

$str = '1 x red 1 x blue 3 x yellow';
preg_match_all('/\d+\s+x\s+\S+/', $str, $matches);
print_r($matches);

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => 1 x red
            [1] => 1 x blue
            [2] => 3 x yellow
        )

)

You might also use preg_split() where the split pattern is something like, non-digit before a space then digit after the space -- but I would imagine this is somewhat more fragile:

print_r(preg_split('/(?<=\D) (?=\d)/', $str));

Array
(
    [0] => 1 x red
    [1] => 1 x blue
    [2] => 3 x yellow
)