Using a string path to set nested array data

Question

I have an unusual use-case I'm trying to code for. The goal is this: I want the customer to be able to provide a string, such as:

"cars.honda.civic = On" 

Using this string, my code will set a value as follows:

$data['cars']['honda']['civic'] = 'On'; 

It's easy enough to tokenize the customer input as such:

$token = explode("=",$input); $value = trim($token[1]); $path = trim($token[0]); $exploded_path = explode(".",$path); 

But now, how do I use $exploded path to set the array without doing something nasty like an eval?

Answer 1

Use the reference operator to get the successive existing arrays:

$temp = &$data; foreach($exploded as $key) {     $temp = &$temp[$key]; } $temp = $value; unset($temp);