Explode a delimited string without generating empty elements

How do i explode this string '||25||34||73||94||116||128' i need to have a array like this

array (
 0 => '25',
 1 => '34',
 2 => '73',
 3 => '94',
 4 => '116',
 5 => '128'
)

explode("||", $array); didnt work for me i get this array

array (
 0 => '',
 1 => '25',
 2 => '34',
 3 => '73',
 4 => '94',
 5 => '116',
 6 => '128',
) 

$array = explode('||', trim($string, '|'));