Question

What is the fastest way to convert this string to this array?

$string = 'a="b" c="d" e="f"';

Array (
a => b
c => d
e => f
)

Answer 1

Assuming they’re always separated by spaces and the values always surrounded by quotes, you can explode() twice and strip out the quotes. There might be a faster way to do this, but this method is very straightforward.

$string = 'a="b" c="d" e="f"';
// Output array
$ouput = array();
// Split the string on spaces...
$temp = explode(" ", $string);

// Iterate over each key="val" group
foreach ($temp as $t) {
  // Split it on the =
  $pair = explode("=", $t);
  // Append to the output array using the first component as key
  // and the second component (without quotes) as the value
  $output[$pair[0]] = str_replace('"', '', $pair[1]);
}

print_r($output);
array(3) {
  ["a"]=>
  string(1) "b"
  ["c"]=>
  string(1) "d"
  ["e"]=>
  string(1) "f"
}