Parse string into multidimensional array with single regex?

Question

I was wondering if anyone here could help me. I have the following string:

$str = 'unit1(field1,field2,field3),unit2(field4,field5,field6)';

I am trying to parse this string to create the following array:

array(
  'unit1' => array('field1', 'field2', 'field3')
  'unit2' => array('field4', 'field5', 'field6')
)

I am pretty hopeless with regex so I am not even sure where to start with this.

Thanks

I think you're missing some single quotes in the bottom unit2? — John
– John, Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 3:18
To learn about regex you can start here regular-expressions.info. Then check out preg_match and preg_match_all on the PHP docs. Once you read all that try to build your own solution and come back with the code that failed and somebody might help. — elclanrs
– elclanrs, Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 3:19
why not choose a more standardized format like JSON: [{"unit":"unit1", "fields":["field1","field2"]},...] and json_decode($str)? — John Dvorak
– John Dvorak, Commented Jul 17, 2013 at 3:57

Orangepill · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-17 03:48:48Z

3

You can do this without using regular expressions

 $str = 'unit1(field1,field2,field3),unit2(field4,field5,field6)';
 $str = trim($str, ")");
 $parts = explode("),",$str);
 $results = array();
 foreach($parts as $part){
      list($key, $value) = explode("(", $part,2);
      $results[$key] = explode(",", $value);
 }

Now the $results will contain your output as you specified.

answered Jul 17, 2013 at 3:48

Orangepill

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