PHP Associative Array in an Indexed Array

Question

I have a $string:

'Name   Height  Weight
 John   177     142
 Jill   156     123
 Jacob  183     157'

And I'm turning it into an $array of the following structure:

Array (
    [0] => Array (
        ['Name'] => 'John'
        ['Height'] => '177'
        ['Weight'] => '142'
    )
    [1] = > Array (
        ['Name'] => 'Jill'
        ['Height'] => '156'
        ['Weight'] => '123'
    )
    [2] = > Array (
        ['Name'] => 'Jacob'
        ['Height'] => '183'
        ['Weight'] => '157'
    )
)

Using the following code:

$rows = explode("\n",$string); //creates an indexed array of rows as strings
$headers = explode("\t",$rows[0]); //creates an indexed array of headers as strings
$rows = array_slice($rows,1); //removes headers from $rows
$array = Array();
foreach($rows as $row) {
    $array[] = array_combine($headers, explode("\t",$row)); //creates associative arrays for each row
}

However, I cannot access the associative arrays inside of the indexed $array

For example, this doesn't work:

echo $array[0]['Name'];

Even though echo implode(', ', array_keys($array[0])); gives:

Name, Height, Weight

I've tried many different ways of accessing the associative arrays inside of the indexed array, but with no luck. What am I doing wrong?

EDIT:

So,

$string = "Name Height  Weight
John    177 142
Jill    156 123
Jacob‌​ 183 157";

Does not work, but

$string = "Name\tHeight\tWeight\nJohn\t177\t142\nJill\t156\t123\nJacob‌​‌​\t183\t157";

does...

So I suppose the question is: What's the difference? And how would I interpret the former string as the latter?

Answer 1

Your code does not produce that array structure but it can be fixed like this:

$string = 'Name   Height  Weight
 John   177     142
 Jill   156     123
 Jacob  183     157';

$rows = explode("\n",$string); //creates an indexed array of rows as strings

$headers = preg_split("#\s+#",trim($rows[0], "\n\r\t ")); //creates an indexed array of headers as strings, by splitting by any white space
var_dump($headers);

$rows = array_slice($rows,1); //removes headers from $rows
$array = Array();
foreach($rows as $row) {
    $array[] = array_combine($headers, preg_split("#\s+#",trim($row, "\n\r\t "))); //creates associative arrays for each row, by splitting by any white space
}

var_dump($array);

This produces output:

array(3) {
  [0]=>
  string(4) "Name"
  [1]=>
  string(6) "Height"
  [2]=>
  string(6) "Weight"
}
array(3) {
  [0]=>
  array(3) {
    ["Name"]=>
    string(4) "John"
    ["Height"]=>
    string(3) "177"
    ["Weight"]=>
    string(3) "142"
  }
  [1]=>
  array(3) {
    ["Name"]=>
    string(4) "Jill"
    ["Height"]=>
    string(3) "156"
    ["Weight"]=>
    string(3) "123"
  }
  [2]=>
  array(3) {
    ["Name"]=>
    string(5) "Jacob"
    ["Height"]=>
    string(3) "183"
    ["Weight"]=>
    string(3) "157"
  }
}

The main ideas are that you must trim evey row string by any additional whitespaces and to split by the longest whitespace sequence.