Unexpected bracket '[' - PHP

That's called array dereferencing and only works in PHP 5.4+. You're probably running PHP 5.3.x wherever you are getting that error.

See results based on different PHP versions

Alright, I created 4 alternative versions of the PHP split string algorithm, along with the two provided by @hanshenrik, and did a basic benchmark on them:

function explode1(delimiter, str, limit) {
    if (limit == null) {
        return s.split(delimiter);
    }
    var a = [];
    var lastIndex = -1;
    var index = 0;
    for (var i = 0; i < limit; i++) {
        index = str.indexOf(delimiter, lastIndex + 1);
        if (i == limit - 1) {
            a.push(str.substring(lastIndex + 1));
        } else {
            a.push(str.substring(lastIndex + 1, index));
        }
        lastIndex = index;
    }
    return a;
}

function explode2(delimiter, str, limit) {
    if (limit == null) {
        return s.split(delimiter);
    }
    var a = str.split(delimiter);
    var ret = a.slice(0, limit - 1);
    ret.push(a.slice(limit - 1).join(delimiter));
    return ret;
}

function explode3(delimiter, str, limit) {
    if (limit == null) {
        return s.split(delimiter);
    }
    var a = s.split(delimiter, limit - 1);
    var index = 0;
    for (var i = 0; i < limit - 1; i++) {
        index = s.indexOf(delimiter, index + 1);
    }
    a.push(str.substring(index + 1));
    return a;
}

function explode4(delimiter, str, limit) {
    if (limit == null) {
        return s.split(delimiter);
    }
    var a = str.split(delimiter, limit - 1);
    a.push(str.substring(a.join(delimiter).length + 1));
    return a;
}

function explode5(delimiter, string, limit) {
    //  discuss at: http://locutus.io/php/explode/
    // original by: Kevin van Zonneveld (http://kvz.io)
    //   example 1: explode(' ', 'Kevin van Zonneveld')
    //   returns 1: [ 'Kevin', 'van', 'Zonneveld' ]

    if (arguments.length < 2 ||
        typeof delimiter === 'undefined' ||
        typeof string === 'undefined') {
        return null
    }
    if (delimiter === '' ||
        delimiter === false ||
        delimiter === null) {
        return false
    }
    if (typeof delimiter === 'function' ||
        typeof delimiter === 'object' ||
        typeof string === 'function' ||
        typeof string === 'object') {
        return {
            0: ''
        }
    }
    if (delimiter === true) {
        delimiter = '1'
    }

    // Here we go...
    delimiter += ''
    string += ''

    var s = string.split(delimiter)

    if (typeof limit === 'undefined') return s

    // Support for limit
    if (limit === 0) limit = 1

    // Positive limit
    if (limit > 0) {
        if (limit >= s.length) {
            return s
        }
        return s
            .slice(0, limit - 1)
            .concat([s.slice(limit - 1)
                .join(delimiter)
            ])
    }

    // Negative limit
    if (-limit >= s.length) {
        return []
    }

    s.splice(s.length + limit)
    return s
}

function explode6(delimiter, string, limit) {
        var spl = string.split(delimiter);
        if (spl.length <= limit) {
                return spl;
        }
        var ret = [],i=0;
        for (; i < limit; ++i) {
                ret.push(spl[i]);
        }
        for (; i < spl.length; ++i) {
                ret[limit - 1] += delimiter+spl[i];
        }
        return ret;
}

var s = 'Mark Twain,1879-11-14,"We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground."'
console.log(s);

console.time('explode1');
var a1 = explode1(',', s, 3);
//console.log(a1);
console.timeEnd('explode1');

console.time('explode2');
var a2 = explode2(',', s, 3);
//console.log(a2);
console.timeEnd('explode2');

console.time('explode3');
var a3 = explode3(',', s, 3);
//console.log(a3);
console.timeEnd('explode3');

console.time('explode4');
var a4 = explode4(',', s, 3);
//console.log(a4);
console.timeEnd('explode4');

console.time('explode5');
var a5 = explode5(',', s, 3);
//console.log(a5);
console.timeEnd('explode5');

console.time('explode6');
var a6 = explode6(',', s, 3);
//console.log(a6);
console.timeEnd('explode6');

The two best-performing algorithms was explode4 principally, with explode3 a close second in multiple iterations of the benchmark:

$ node explode1.js && node explode2.js && node explode3.js && node 
explode4.js && node explode5.js && node explode6.js
explode1: 0.200ms
explode2: 0.194ms
explode3: 0.147ms
explode4: 0.183ms
explode5: 0.341ms
explode6: 0.162ms

You can run your own benchmarks, but with my tests I can confirm that splitting an array by n - 1 and then getting an index from joining the resulting array is the fastest algorithm matching explode in PHP.

EDIT: It turns out that the garbage collector biased how each successive function was measured, so I split them off into their own individual files and re-ran the benchmarking a few times. It seems explode3 is the best performing, not explode4, but I won't make a decision that I'm not completely sure of.

Looking at the copy-paste, it looks like you have a space character after the word "END" on the first line:

'echo <<<END '

Try getting rid of the space character. Answer found by Googling. Source (link now dead): http://www.alexxoid.com/blog/dev/php-dev/php-parse-error-unexpected-t_sl.html