Question

I can’t comprehend how it works without using eval – what’s the secret behind this?

Edit: Could someone present a trivial example of how the tree structure is converted to an object?

Answer 1

trivial example of how to convert a string with json into an object without eval:

  var txt='[\'one\',\'two\']';

  var re1='(\\[)';  // Any Single Character 1
  var re2='(\\\'.*?\\\')';  // Single Quote String 1
  var re3='(,)';    // Any Single Character 2
  var re4='(\\\'.*?\\\')';  // Single Quote String 2
  var re5='(\\])';  // Any Single Character 3

  var p = new RegExp(re1+re2+re3+re4+re5,["i"]);
  var m = p.exec(txt);
  if (m != null)
  {
      var c1=m[1];
      var s1=m[2];
      var c2=m[3];
      var s2=m[4];
      var c3=m[5];

      return [s1, s2];
  }
  return null;

yes this a horrible way to do it, but it does what it claims for that string :p