Question

How do I split a string into a multidimensional array in PHP without loops?

My string is in the format "A,5|B,3|C,8"

Answer 1

Without you actually doing the looping part, something based on array_map + explode should do the trick ; for instance, considering you are using PHP 5.3 :

$str = "A,5|B,3|C,8";

$a = array_map(
    function ($substr) {
        return explode(',', $substr);
    }, 
    explode('|', $str)
);
var_dump($a);

Will get you :

array
  0 => 
    array
      0 => string 'A' (length=1)
      1 => string '5' (length=1)
  1 => 
    array
      0 => string 'B' (length=1)
      1 => string '3' (length=1)
  2 => 
    array
      0 => string 'C' (length=1)
      1 => string '8' (length=1)

Of course, this portion of code could be re-written to not use a lambda-function, and work with PHP < 5.3 — but not as fun ^^

Still, I presume array_map will loop over each element of the array returned by explode… So, even if the loop is not in your code, there will still be one…