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From: Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.php
Subject: Re: parsing print_r() output with preg_match_all()
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2016 21:12:12 +0000
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"R.Wieser" <address@not.available> writes:

>> It would be a lot simpler if you could switch to using
>> serialize and unserialize.  Do you need to use print_r
>> for some other reason?
>
> I'm using it to store the array-of-arrays into a file in human-readable
> format.  I intend to parse this file using another program, posibly alter
> some info and write it back.

Well the output of serialise is human-readable (just about).  It's not
ideal, but then parsing print_r output is not ideal either.  In fact,
it's not even possible in all cases though you may be able to make
enough assumptions about what's in the strings to get away with it.

But I would seriously consider some other plan.  If it's always going to
be just an array of arrays of strings, you could design your own
human-readable format whilst making it (much) easier to read back.

<snip>
-- 
Ben.