indented text list to array (recursion)

[twaynw]

Howdy,

I'm trying to get a tabbed list into a structured array and can't seem to get it.

I'd like the get from this:

<?php
$contents = array(
	'Level 1 Item 1',
	'Level 1 Item 2',
	"\t".'Level 1 Item 2 > Level 2 Item 1',
	"\t".'Level 1 Item 2 > Level 2 Item 2',
	'Level 1 Item 3',
	'Level 1 Item 4',
	"\t".'Level 1 Item 4 > Level 2 Item 1',
	"\t\t".'Level 1 Item 4 > Level 2 Item 1 > Level 3 Item 1',
	"\t\t".'Level 1 Item 4 > Level 2 Item 1 > Level 3 Item 2',
	"\t\t\t".'Level 1 Item 4 > Level 2 Item 1 > Level 3 Item 1 > Level 4 Item 1',
	"\t\t\t".'Level 1 Item 4 > Level 2 Item 1 > Level 3 Item 1 > Level 4 Item 2',
	'Level 1 Item 5',
	);
?>

To this:

<?php
$contents['level1'][0]='Level 1 Item 1';
$contents['level1'][1]='Level 1 Item 2';
$contents['level1'][1]['level2'][0]='Level 1 Item 2 > Level 2 Item 1';
$contents['level1'][1]['level2'][1]='Level 1 Item 2 > Level 2 Item 2';
$contents['level1'][2]='Level 1 Item 3';
$contents['level1'][3]='Level 1 Item 4';
$contents['level1'][3]['level2'][0]='Level 1 Item 4 > Level 2 Item 1';
$contents['level1'][3]['level2'][0]['level3'][0]='Level 1 Item 4 > Level 2 Item 1 > Level 3 Item 1';
$contents['level1'][3]['level2'][0]['level3'][1]='Level 1 Item 4 > Level 2 Item 1 > Level 3 Item 2';
$contents['level1'][3]['level2'][0]['level3'][1]['level4'][0]='Level 1 Item 4 > Level 2 Item 1 > Level 3 Item 1 > Level 4 Item 1';
$contents['level1'][3]['level2'][0]['level3'][1]['level4'][1]='Level 1 Item 4 > Level 2 Item 1 > Level 3 Item 1 > Level 4 Item 2';
$contents['level1'][4]='Level 1 Item 5';
?>

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated!

[Weedpacket]

Even without the typo your desired structure is syntactically invalid (it requires, for example, that $contents['level1'][1] be both a string and an array). You'll need to fix and tidy that up before you'll be able to make any progress.

[twaynw]

Thanks for pointing out the typo. The desired structure is correct, or at least it works! Anyway, I'd like to turn an indented text file into a well formed array:

item a
     item a 1
     item a 2
item b
item c
     item c 1
     item c 2
          item c 2 item a
          item c 2 item b
     item c 3
item d

[rmbarnes82]

No, like the previous poster pointed out, the array u give is invalid.

This line assigns a string to $contents['level1'][1].

$contents['level1'][1]='Level 1 Item 2';

But here, you use this string as an array

$contents['level1'][1]['level2'][0]='Level 1 Item 2 > Level 2 Item 1'; 

Also, is this just an excercise you have set yourself or does this have a real world purpose? I ask this because I think there's a possiblity that using XML could be a better way to try and represent a data structure in plain text, and there are XML parsers out there prewritten.

Robin

[twaynw]

Thanks for the replies!

This is a real world project, lots of money on the line, government bureaucracies, etc. XML is unfortunately not a solution I can use for this project. The problem is that the source for the array is going to be a tab indented text file.

Maybe my example caused confusion.

$contents['level1'][1]['level2'][0]='Level 1 Item 2 > Level 2 Item 1';
print $contents['level1'][1]['level2'][0]; // prints Level 1 Item 2 > Level 2 Item 1

I suppose I could have just written this:

$contents['level1'][1]['level2'][0]='Fred Flintstone';
print $contents['level1'][1]['level2'][0]; // prints Fred Flintstone

Or instead of using [] syntax I could do this:

$contents = array(
	'level1'=>array(
		0=>'item0,
		1=>array(
			'level2'=>array(
				0=>'Fred Flintstone',
				),
			),
		),
	);

So, the question is how to get a tabbed indented text list into a properly formed array?