Explode an string by some characters

[etrader]

How I can explode by a series of characters (not one single character)? For example, divide the string to an array by any of these characters "," and ";" and "."

 

$string = "this, that;some.word;second";

 

I want to put all of these words into an array.

[dragon_sa]

<?php
$string = "this, that;some.word;second";
$change=array(":", ";", ",", "-");
$values=str_replace($change, ".", $string);
$result=explode(".", $values);
?>

[sasa]

or

<?php
$string = "this, that;some.word;second";
$separators = array(":", ";", ",", "-", '\.');//must escape dot
$result = preg_split('/('.implode('|',$separators).')\s*/',$string);
print_r($result);
?>