Parse string of alternating letters and numbers (no delimiters) to associative array - php

Question

I need to parse a string of alternating letters and number and populate an array where the letters are the keys and the numbers are the values.
Example:
p10s2z1234
Output
Array(
'p' => 10,
's' => 2,
'z' => 1234
)

Answer 1

Use regex to get desired values and then combine arrays to get associative array. For example:
$str = 'p10s2z1234';
preg_match_all('/([a-z]+)(\d+)/', $str, $matches); //handles only lower case chars. feel free to extend regex
print_r(array_combine($matches[1], $matches[2]));

Answer 2

Scenario 1: You want to parse the string which has single letters to be keys, will produce three pairs of values, and you want the digits to be cast as integers. Then the best, most direct approach is sscanf() with array destructuring -- a single function call does it all. (Demo)
$str = 'p10s2z1234';
[
$k1,
$result[$k1],
$k2,
$result[$k2],
$k3,
$result[$k3]
] = sscanf($str, '%1s%d%1s%d%1s%d');
var_export($result);
Output:
array (
'p' => 10,
's' => 2,
'z' => 1234,
)
Scenario 2: You want the same parsing and output as scenario 1, but the substrings to be keys have variable/unknown length. (Demo)
$str = 'pie10sky2zebra1234';
[
$k1,
$result[$k1],
$k2,
$result[$k2],
$k3,
$result[$k3]
] = sscanf($str, '%[^0-9]%d%[^0-9]%d%[^0-9]%d');
var_export($result);
Scenario 3: You want to parse the string with regex and don't care that the values are "string" data-typed. (Demo)
$str = 'pie10sky2zebra1234';
[
$k1,
$result[$k1],
$k2,
$result[$k2],
$k3,
$result[$k3]
] = preg_split('/(\d+)/', $str, 0, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY | PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
var_export($result);
Scenario 4: If you don't know how many pairs will be generated by the input string, use array_combine(). (Demo)
$str = 'pie10sky2zebra1234extra999';
var_export(
preg_match_all('/(\D+)(\d+)/', $str, $m)
? array_combine($m[1], $m[2])
: []
);