Question

how can I match these:

(1, 'asd', 'asd2')

but not match this:

(1, '(data)', 0)

I want to match the ( and ), but not match ( and ) inside ( and ).

Actually these are queries and I want to split them via preg_split.

/[\(*\)]+/

splits them, but also splits ( and ) inside them, how can I fix this?

Example:

The data is:

(1, ‘user1’, 1, 0, 0, 0)(2, ‘user(2)’, 1, 0, 0, 1)

I want to split them as:

Array(
    0 => (1, 'user1', 1, 0, 0, 0)
    1 => (2, 'user(2)', 1, 0, 0, 1)
);

instead of it, its splitted as:

Array(
    0 => (1, 'user1', 1, 0, 0, 0)
    1 => (2, 'user
    2 => 2
    3 => ', 1, 0, 0, 1)
);

Answer 1

A regex for this would be a little nasty. Instead, you can iterate over the entire string and decide where to split:

• If it’s a ), split there. (I’m assuming the brackets are balanced in the string and can’t be nested)
• If it’s a ', ignore any ) until a closing ' (If it can be escaped, you can look at the previous characters for an odd number of \).

I think this is a more straight-forward solution than a regex.