How to parse an ini-formatted string into an associative array?

Question

I'm trying to break up this string,

AFRIKAANS = af
ALBANIAN = sq
AMHARIC = am
ARABIC = ar
ARMENIAN = hy
AZERBAIJANI = az
BASQUE = eu
BELARUSIAN = be
BENGALI = bn
BIHARI = bh
BULGARIAN = bg
BURMESE = my
CATALAN = ca
CHEROKEE = chr
CHINESE = zh

Into an array like this

$lang_codes['chinese'] = "zh";

So the name of the language is the key, and the value is the language code. This is really simple, but I just can't get my head around it. I've taken a brake from programming, too long, obviously...

I've tried exploding at \n then using a foreach, exploding again at = but I can't seem to piece it together the way I want.

Answer 1

I've tried exploding at \n then using a foreach, exploding again at " = "

I think this is exactly the right approach.

$lines = explode("\n", $langs);
$lang_codes = array();

foreach ($lines as $line) {
    list ($lang, $code) = explode(" = ", $line, 2);
    $lang_codes[$lang] = $code;
}

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If you want the language to be in lowercase, as in your example ($lang_codes['chinese']), you'll need to call strtolower:

$lang_codes[strtolower($lang)] = $code;

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See the PHP manual for more on these functions:

• list
• explode