PHP regex - Divide plain text by string object

Question

I have a file.txt with this content:

{"name":"merli"}{"name":"berta"}{"name":"ivan"}
{"name":"joan"}
{"name":"mireia"}{"name":"pol"}
{"name":"gerard"}

I am using this code, but i don't know how to separate by "}{" without losing the brackets

$exploded = preg_split('/\r\n|\r|\n|}{/', 'file.txt');

The result i am getting is like:

Array (
    0: {"name":"merli"
    1: "name":"berta"
    2: "name":"ivan"}
    3: {"name":"joan"}
    4: {"name":"mireia"
    5: "name":"pol"}
    6: {"name":"gerard"}
)

And I need this:

Array (
    0: {"name":"merli"}
    1: {"name":"berta"}
    2: {"name":"ivan"}
    3: {"name":"joan"}
    4: {"name":"mireia"}
    5: {"name":"pol"}
    6: {"name":"gerard"}
)

Answer 1

You can simply loop over the string characters and don't involve with \r and \n characters at all. Find {, find } and have all characters in between them in $temp as shown below.

Snippet:

<?php

$str = '{"name":"merli"}{"name":"berta"}{"name":"ivan"}
{"name":"joan"}
{"name":"mireia"}{"name":"pol"}
{"name":"gerard"}';

$result = [];
$len = strlen($str);

for($i = 0;$i < $len;++$i){
    while($i < $len && $str[$i] != '{') $i++;
    $temp = '';
    while($i < $len && $str[$i] != '}') $temp .= $str[$i++];
    $temp .= '}';
    $result[] = $temp;
}

print_r($result);

Demo: https://3v4l.org/1OFen