Question

I have a flat array of pipe-delimited strings:

Array
(
    [0] => style1|000000
    [1] => style2|ff6600
)

I iterate the data like this:

foreach ($styles as $key => $value) {
    $sort_values[] = explode('|', $value);
}

print_r($sort_values) shows:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [0] => style1
            [1] => 000000
        )
    [1] => Array
        (
            [0] => style2
            [1] => ff6600
        )
)

I would actually like a transposed structure with associative first level keys:

Array
(
    [styles] => Array
        (
            [0] => style1
            [1] => style2
        )
    [links] => Array
        (
            [0] => 000000
            [1] => ff6600
        )
)

Answer 1

Assuming your input array looks like

array('style1|000000','style2|ff6600', 'style3|22ff22')

You need a little more logic in your loop.

// Initialize output array with an empty styles subarray and a links subarray
$out = array('styles'=>array(), 'links'=>array());
foreach ($styles as $key=>$value) {
   // Loop over and split on the |
   list($style, $link) = explode("|", $value);
   // And append the two resultant values to their respective subarrays via []
   $out['styles'][] = $style;
   $out['links'][] = $link;

   // list() is a useful construct for producing readable results with small arrays,
   // but I could also have used an array to receive the 
   // results of explode()
   // $split = explode("|", $value);
   // $out['styles'][] = $split[0];
   // $out['links'][] = $split[1];

}
print_r($out);

// Prints:
Array
(
    [styles] => Array
        (
            [0] => style1
            [1] => style2
            [2] => style3
        )

    [links] => Array
        (
            [0] => 000000
            [1] => ff6600
            [2] => 22ff22
        )

)