Explode string by semicolon using php's preg_split

Question

I have this string (it's an apple .strings file):

/* this is a comment line; it may contain semicolons */
"you have here some text; also may contain semicolons" = "some other text;";

/* this is a comment line; it may contain semicolons */
"you have here some text; also may contain semicolons" = "some other text;";

and so on.

I need to split this string after the semicolons at the end of each non-commented line.

If I use explode(";\n", $string); may not be accurate as the line could end in a ;(whitespace)(new line)

Update: The output should be an array. Each element should contain the commented line (if exists) and the quoted strings line.

You can use `;\s*\n` to allow whitespaces between the colon and the line end. - or simple match all key/value pairs directly, using `preg_match_all` and `"([^"]+)"\s*=\s*"([^"]+)"\*;`. if the values may containt escaped versions of `"` use something like `^"(.*?)"\s*=\s*"(.*?)";\s*\n$` — dognose, Dec 03 '12 at 12:10

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 03 '12 at 11:51

1

You might be best simply reading the file line by line, testing for comment characters using strpos(), and using str_getcsv() for parsing the file lines rather than regexp

answered Dec 03 '12 at 11:51

Mark Baker

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won't str_getcsv() mess the quoted strings containing semicolons ? I think it will. – Marvin Saldinger Dec 03 '12 at 12:10
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The whole point of using str_getcsv() is that it handles quoted strings correctly – Mark Baker Dec 03 '12 at 12:25

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 03 '12 at 12:21

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If you're only concerned about the optional whitespace, you might get along with

$array = preg_split("/;\s*\n/", $string);

preg_split takes a regular expression while explode takes a string as delimiter.

answered Dec 03 '12 at 12:21

ditscheri

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Explode string by semicolon using php's preg_split

2 Answers2