PHP Split String contains arrays inside bracket into Multidimensional Arrays

Question

I have a string where there are arrays separated by {|} like this :

$string = "Hi, {Mr.|Mrs.} {Alvin|Dale}! Good Morning!";

One of the many things I've tried :

$string = "Hi, {Mr.|Mrs.} {Alvin|Dale}! Good Morning!";
preg_match_all("/[()=]|\\{[^\}]+\\}|[+-]|[^=]+$/", $string, $matches);

Expected result:

$result = array ( 
0 => array ( 0 => 'Hi, '), 
1 => array ( 0 => 'Mr.', 1 => 'Mrs.'),
2 => array ( 0 => ' '), 
3 => array ( 0 => 'Alvin', 1 => 'Dale'), 
4 => array ( 0 => '! Good Morning!')
);

Actual result:

$result = array ( 
0 => 'Hi, {Mr.|Mrs.} {Alvin|Dale}! Good Morning!'
);

Answer 1

You could split the string on matching from an opening curly till a closing curly brace, and keep the values you split on using that pattern in a capture group for the inner part of the curly braces

Then you can use array_map and split on |.

For example

$pattern = "/{([^{}]+)}/";
$string = "Hi, {Mr.|Mrs.} {Alvin|Dale}! Good Morning!";
$result = preg_split($pattern, $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY | PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);

$result = array_map(function($x) {
    return explode('|', $x);
}, $result);

Output

array (
  0 => 
  array (
    0 => 'Hi, ',
  ),
  1 => 
  array (
    0 => 'Mr.',
    1 => 'Mrs.',
  ),
  2 => 
  array (
    0 => ' ',
  ),
  3 => 
  array (
    0 => 'Alvin',
    1 => 'Dale',
  ),
  4 => 
  array (
    0 => '! Good Morning!',
  ),
)

See a PHP demo