Error parsing regex pattern in php - php

Question

I want to split a string such as the following (by a divider like '~##' (and only that)):
to=enquiry#test.com~##subject=test~##text=this is body/text~##date=date
into an array containing e.g.:
to => enquiry#test.com
subject => test
text => this is body/text
date => date
I'm using php5 and I've got the following regex, which almost works, but there are a couple of errors and there must be a way to do it in one go:
//Split the string in the url of $text at every ~##
$regexp = "/(?:|(?<=~##))(.*?=.*?)(?:~##|$|\/(?!.*~##))/";
preg_match_all($regexp, $text, $a);
//$a[1] is an array containing var1=content1 var2=content2 etc;
//Now create an array in the form [var1] = content, [var2] = content2
foreach($a[1] as $key => $value) {
//Get the two groups either side of the equals sign
$regexp = "/([^\/~##,= ]+)=([^~##,= ]+)/";
preg_match_all($regexp, $value, $r);
//Assign to array key = value
$val[$r[1][0]] = $r[2][0]; //e.g. $val['subject'] = 'hi'
}
print_r($val);
My queries are that:
It doesn't seem to capture more than 3 different sets of parameters
It is breaking on the # symbol and so not capturing email addresses e.g. returning:
to => enquiry
subject => test
text => this is body/text
I am doing multiple different regex searches where I suspect I would be able to do one.
Any help would be really appreciated.
Thanks

Answer 1

Why are you using regex when there is much simple method to do this by explode like this
$str = 'to=enquiry#test.com~##subject=test~##text=this is body/text~##date=date';
$array = explode('~##',$str);
$finalArr = array();
foreach($array as $val)
{
$tmp = explode('=',$val);
$finalArr[$tmp['0']] = $tmp['1'];
}
echo '<pre>';
print_r($finalArr);