PHP Grab first word from line

I have a file that looks like this (with newlines and weird spacing):

Player:         Alive: Score: Ping: Member of Team: 
player1         No     16     69    dogs      
bug             Yes    2  开发者_C百科    63    insects            
name with space No     0      69    cats        
bob             No     0      69    dogs

How can I grab the first column and turn it into an array?

Desired Output:

$players[1] ----> "player1"

$players[2] ----> "bug"

$players[3] ----> "name with space"

$players[4] ----> "bob"

---

<?php
    $a=file('file.txt');
    $pos=strpos($a[0],'Alive:');
    $res=array_map(function($x) use ($pos){
        return trim(substr($x,0,$pos));
    },$a);
    unset($res[0]);

For PHP 5.2-

<?php
    $a=file('file.txt');
    $pos=strpos($a[0],'Alive:');
    function funcname($x,$pos){
        return trim(substr($x,0,$pos));
    }
    $res=array_map('funcname',$a,array_fill(0,count($a),$pos));
    unset($res[0]);

---

Another option using a regex could look like:

preg_match_all('/^.{0,15}?(?= {2}|(?<=^.{15}))/m', $subject, $matches);
$players = $matches[0];
unset($players[0]); // remove header

var_export($players);

The resulting $players array looks like

array (
  1 => 'player1',
  2 => 'bug',
  3 => 'name with space',
  4 => 'bob',
)

Note: As with any regex-based solution, if the above looks like magic then please don't use it. There is absolutely no point copying and pasting a regular expression into your code if you've no clue what it is actually trying to match.

---

Here is an approach with Iterators:

class SubstringIterator extends IteratorIterator
{
    protected $startAtOffset, $endAtOffset;

    public function __construct($iterator, $startAtOffset, $endAtOffset = null) {
        parent::__construct($iterator);
        $this->startAtOffset = $startAtOffset;
        $this->endAtOffset = $endAtOffset;
    }

    public function current() {
        return substr(parent::current(), $this->startAtOffset, $this->endAtOffset);
    }
}

You would use it like this:

$playerIterator = new LimitIterator(
    new SubstringIterator(
        new SplFileObject('yourFile.txt'), 
        0, // start at beginning of line 
        15 // end before Alive:
    ) 
    , 1 // start at line 2 in file (omits the headline)
);

You can then foreach over the iterator, e.g.

foreach ($playerIterator as $player) {
    echo $player, PHP_EOL;
}

Output:

player1        
bug            
name with space
bob         

Or transform the stacked Iterators into an array:

$array = iterator_to_array($playerIterator);
print_r($array);

Output:

Array
(
    [1] => player1        
    [2] => bug            
    [3] => name with space
    [4] => bob            
)

Demo of above examples with your file's data

---

The simplest way:

$file = file_get_contents($filepath);
$column_width = strpos($file,'Alive:') + 1;
preg_match_all('/^(.{'.$column_width.'}).*$/m', $file, $matches);
unset($matches[1][0]);
$result = array_map('trim', $matches[1]);

The final $result is:

array (
    0 => 'player1',
    1 => 'bug',
    2 => 'name with space',
    3 => 'bob',
  ),