Problems with regexes when porting from Ruby to PHP - php

Question

I have two bits of code that seem to be correct translations of one another. They unfortunately appear to return different values.
Code in Ruby:
def separate(text,boundary = nil)
# returns array of strings and arrays containing all of the parts of the email
textList = []
if !boundary #look in the email for "boundary= X"
text.scan(/(?<=boundary=).*/) do |bound|
textList = recursiveSplit(text,bound)
end
end
if boundary
textList = recursiveSplit(text,boundary)
end
puts textList.count
return textList
end
def recursiveSplit(chunk,boundary)
if chunk.is_a? String
searchString = "--" + boundary
ar = chunk.split(searchString)
return ar
elsif chunk.is_a? Array
chunk do |bit|
recursiveSplit(bit,boundary);
end
end
end
Code in PHP:
function separate($text, $boundary="none"){
#returns array of strings and arrays containing all the parts of the email
$textBlock = [];
if ($boundary == "none") {
preg_match_all('/(?<=boundary=).*/', $text, $matches);
$matches = $matches[0];
foreach ($matches as $match) {
$textList = recursiveSplit($text,$match);
}
}else {
$textList = recursiveSplit(text,boundary);
}
var_dump($textList);
return$textList;
}
function recursiveSplit($chunk,$boundary){
if (is_string($chunk)) {
$ar = preg_split("/--".$boundary."/", $chunk);
//$ar = explode($searchString, $chunk);
return $ar;
}
elseif (is_array($chunk)) {
foreach ($chunk as $bit) {
recursiveSplit($bit,$boundary);
}
}
}
var_dump($textList) shows an array of length 3, whereas textList.count => 4. What gives?
Anonymized $text example:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: by 10.112.170.40 with HTTP; Fri, 3 May 2013 05:08:21 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Fri, 3 May 2013 08:08:21 -0400
Delivered-To: me#gmail.com
Message-ID: <CADPp44E47syuXvP1K-aemhcU7vdSijZkfKLu-74QPWs9U9551Q#mail.gmail.com>
Subject: MiB 5/3/13 7:43AM (EST)
From: Me <me#gmail.com>
To: Someone <someone#aol.com>
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=BNDRY1
--BNDRY1
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=BNDRY2
--BNDRY2
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
-TEXT STUFF HERE. SAYING THINGS
ABOUT CERTAIN THINGS
--BNDRY2
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
<div dir="ltr">-changed signature methods to conform more to working clinic header methods(please test/not testable in simulator)<div style>-confirmed that signature image is showing up in simulator. Awaiting further tests</div>
<div style>-Modified findings spacing/buffer. See if you like it</div></div>
--BNDRY2--
--BNDRY1
Content-Type: application/zip; name="Make it Brief.ipa.zip"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Make it Brief.ipa.zip"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
X-Attachment-Id: f_hg9biuno0
<<FILE DATA>>
--BNDRY1--
Run separate(text) on example or any gmail "view original" email in order to reproduce error

Answer 1

BINGO ZINGO Figured it out!
Apparently, in PHP, in order to change a variable inside a loop involving that variable, you have to preface the variable with '&'
Added '&' and fixed some general recursion errors and it ran smoothly.