PHP Turn a Numbered String List into Array

Question

With PHP if you have a string which may or may not have spaces after the dot, such as:

"1. one 2.too 3. free 4. for 5.five "

What function can you use to create an array as follows:

array(1 => "one", 2 => "too", 3 => "free", 4 => "for", 5 => "five")

with the key being the list item number (e.g the array above has no 0)

I presume a regular expression is needed and perhaps use of preg_split or similar? I'm terrible at regular expressions so any help would be greatly appreciated.

regexp would be sweet, but still you know there is always a dot. You don't need regexp. Split on that (explode()) an use the last character in each string to determine the key for the value found in next string. IN EDIT: lol: but then again 11684 is correct. So much more sweet ... — opaque
– opaque, Commented Sep 29, 2012 at 17:47

Teno · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-29 17:53:35Z

2

What about:

$str = "1. one 2.too 3. free 4. for 5.five ";
$arr = preg_split('/\d+\./', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
print_r($arr);

answered Sep 29, 2012 at 17:53

Teno

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2 Comments

user1708684 Over a year ago

That works nicely - many thanks, one thing though... it doesn't keep the number as the key - any ideas?

Teno Over a year ago

In that case, you may insert an artificial element at the beginning of the string and remove the first element after using preg_split(), like $arr = preg_split('/\d+\./', '0.n' . $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY); unset($arr[0]);

Aman Virk · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-29 18:15:17Z

-1

I got a quick hack and it seems to be working fine for me

        $string = "1. one 2.too 3. free 4. for 5.five ";

    $text_only = preg_replace("/[^A-Z,a-z]/",".",$string);
    $num_only = preg_replace("/[^0-9]/",".",$string);

    $explode_nums = explode('.',$num_only);
    $explode_text = explode('.',$text_only);

    foreach($explode_text as $key => $value)
    {
        if($value !== '' && $value !== ' ')
        {
            $text_array[] = $value;
        }
    }

    foreach($explode_nums as $key => $value)
    {
        if($value !== '' && $value !== ' ')
        {
            $num_array[] = $value;
        }
    }

    foreach($num_array as $key => $value)
    {
        $new_array[$value] = $text_array[$key];
    }

    print_r($new_array);

Test it out and let me know if works fine

answered Sep 29, 2012 at 18:15

Aman Virk

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3 Comments

Aman Virk Over a year ago

Wow now even creator marked answers are getting minus 1. Will surely like to know the reason

mario Over a year ago

If you insist. You wrote 25 lines of PHP code for what a single line of regex would accomplish. OP being happy with any subpar code snippet handed to him doesn't make this upvoteworthy. Sorry.

Aman Virk Over a year ago

Surely agree with you, at that point of time none of the answers worked for him, so choose my own way

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