CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpparsing
victor_golf
victor_golf

Reputation: 195

Parsing text in php

I have a string of the following format:

xxx xxx xxx xxx

Now each part can be any of these values: abc, "abc", (abc), NIL

where abc is a string which may also have spaces, parentheses, quotes.

Example string:

TEXT "PLAIN" ("NAME" "file(1).txt") NIL

What is the best way to parse such a string into an array? i.e.

array[0] = TEXT

array[1] = "PLAIN"

array[2] = ("NAME" "file(1).txt")

array[3] = NIL

Upvotes: 0

Views: 472

Answers (2)

Taha Paksu
Taha Paksu

Reputation: 15616

This regular expression will help you:

    $result=array();
    $subject = 'TEXT "PLAIN" (string with spaces) "string with other spaces" ("NAME" "file(1).txt") NIL';
    $regex = '
    /"([^"])+"                   # Match quote, followed by multiple non-quotes, ended by a quote.
    |(\([\w ]+\))                # Or match multiple words and spaces between parentheses
    |\(((?=")([^)]|(?>"|.))+)\)  # Or Match text between parentheses, ignore ending parenthese if inside a quote
    |\w+                         # Or match single words
    /x';

    preg_match_all($regex, $subject, $result, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
    $result = $result[0];
    print_r($result);

    print_r($result);

Test String : 

 TEXT "PLAIN" (string with spaces) "string with other spaces" ("NAME" "file(1).txt") NIL

Result : 

    Array
    (
        [0] => TEXT
        [1] => "PLAIN"
        [2] => (string with spaces)
        [3] => "string with other spaces"
        [4] => ("NAME" "file(1).txt")
        [5] => NIL
    )

Upvotes: 1

adrien
adrien

Reputation: 4439

Try this:

$input = 'TEXT "PLAIN" ("NAME" "file(1).txt") NIL';
$output = array();

$open = 0;
$parts = explode(' ', $input);
for ($i = $j = 0; $i < count($parts); $i++) {
    $open += substr_count($parts[$i], '(');
    $open -= substr_count($parts[$i], ')');

    $output[$j] .= $parts[$i];

    if ($open == 0) {
        $j++;
    }
}

var_dump($output);

What I do is simple : exploding the string in parts by cutting on spaces, then determining if we are inside parathesis or not to re-assemble parts when needed.

Upvotes: 0

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