Explode a string into bidimensional array - php

Question

Excuse me if this question was already solved. I've searched trough the site and couldn't find an answer.
I'm trying to build a bi-dimensional array from a string. The string has this structure:
$workers="name1:age1/name2:age2/name3:age3"
The idea is to explode the array into "persons" using "/" as separator, and then using ":" to explode each "person" into an array that would contain "name" and "age".
I know the basics about the explode function:
$array=explode("separator","$string");
But I have no idea how to face this to make it bidimensional. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Something like the following should work. The goal is to first split the data into smaller chunks, and then step through each chunk and further subdivide it as needed.
$row = 0;
foreach (explode("/", $workers) as $substring) {
$col = 0;
foreach (explode(":", $substring) as $value) {
$array[$row][$col] = $value;
$col++;
}
$row++;
}

Answer 2

$array = array();
$workers = explode('/', "name1:age1/name2:age2/name3:age3");
foreach ($workers as $worker) {
$worker = explode(':', $worker);
$array[$worker[0]] = $worker[1];
}

Answer 3

Try this code:
<?php
$new_arr=array();
$workers="name1:age1/name2:age2/name3:age3";
$arr=explode('/',$workers);
foreach($arr as $value){
$new_arr[]=explode(':',$value);
}
?>

Answer 4

The quick solution is
$results = [];
$data = explode("/", $workers);
foreach ($data as $row) {
$line = explode(":", $row);
$results[] = [$line[0], $line[1]];
}
You could also use array_walk with a custom function which does the second level split for you.

Answer 5

This is another approach, not multidimensional:
parse_str(str_replace(array(':','/'), array('=','&'), $workers), $array);
print_r($array);
Shorter in PHP >= 5.4.0:
parse_str(str_replace([':','/'], ['=','&'], $workers), $array);
print_r($array);

Answer 6

yet another approach, since you didn't really give an example of what you mean by "bidimensional" ...
$workers="name1:age1/name2:age2/name3:age3";
parse_str(rtrim(preg_replace('~name(\d+):([^/]+)/?~','name[$1]=$2&',$workers),'&'),$names);
output:
Array
(
[name] => Array
(
[1] => age1
[2] => age2
[3] => age3
)
)