php curly braces into array

Question

I would like to check a opened .txt file for braces that open and close like below:

file {

nextopen {
//content
}

}

no this is not my own language or anything, but I want to get say the nextopen function and all the contents inside the brackets, and all the stuff from inside the file function and add it to an array if you know what i mean. so all the content inside the braces will be in an array. if you know how to do this please reply.

array should look like this:

array(
[file] => '{ nextopen { //content } }',
[nextopen] => '{ //content }'
);

Answer 1

The basic algo for this is like the following

1. for every sequence { no-braces-here }, put it in a buffer and replace with a magic number identifying its position in the buffer
2. repeat (1) until no more sequences can be found
3. for every entry in a buffer - if it contains magic numbers, replace each number with the corresponding string from the buffer.
4. the buffer is what we're looking for

in php

class Parser
{
    var $buf = array();

    function put_to_buf($x) {
        $this->buf[] = $x[0];
        return '@' . (count($this->buf) - 1) . '@';
    }

    function get_from_buf($x) {
        return $this->buf[intval($x[1])];
    }

    function replace_all($re, $str, $callback) {
        while(preg_match($re, $str))
            $str = preg_replace_callback($re, array($this, $callback), $str);
        return $str;
    }

    function run($text) {
        $this->replace_all('~{[^{}]*}~', $text, 'put_to_buf');
        foreach($this->buf as &$s)
            $s = $this->replace_all('~@(\d+)@~', $s, 'get_from_buf');
        return $this->buf;
    }



}

test

$p = new Parser;
$a = $p->run("just text { foo and { bar and { baz } and { quux } } hello! } ??");
print_r($a);

result

Array
(
    [0] => { baz }
    [1] => { quux }
    [2] => { bar and { baz } and { quux } }
    [3] => { foo and { bar and { baz } and { quux } } hello! }
)

let me know if you have any questions.