Turning string into array indexer

[Nolongerused3921]

I'm having a bit of a problem - I need to access an array entry (I.e., $array['key']['key2']) with a plain text string ($string = "[key][key2]"), but I'm not sure how to go about doing this... I've attempted to get the keys via regex, but that's not going so well and I'm going a bit insane, so I thought I'd get some help here.

 

The regex, to give you an idea what I'm trying to do (I'd prefer not to use regex, if anyone can think of another way) :

preg_match("/^([a-zA-Z0-9]+)(\[([a-zA-Z0-9]+)\])*/", $inputName, $sdf);

 

Returns:

cat[goes][meow]

0: Array

(

    [0] => cat[goes][meow]

    [1] => cat

    [2] => [meow]

    [3] => meow

)

 

I've tried several variations, but they always result in only one key being matched and returned.

[kenrbnsn]

Here's one way of doing it:

<?php
$str = '[testkey1][testkey2]';
list($dk1,$dk2) = explode('][',$str);
list(,$key1) = explode('[',$dk1);
list($key2) = explode(']',$dk2);
echo 'key1 = ' . $key1 . "<br>\n";
echo 'key2 = ' . $key2 . "<br>\n";
?>

 

Ken

[Nolongerused3921]

Thanks for the quick reply, however I should have mentioned I had tried that, deciding not to use it due to issues with the speed of it.

 

Sadly speed is broken down to: Functionless method (God I hope there's one)->Regex->sscanf->explode... The function will be called a lot, so I really wanna try to find something that's as faster than regex, but failing that - regex.