string to array conversion. Help please.

Hi all, I'm a bit surprised that PHP4 doesn't offer function-based conversion between strings and arrays. Yes, I'm familiar with the implode() and explode() functions, but they don't work well on multi-dimensional or key-based arrays. It was relatively easy to write a function to coerce an array into a string (I'll post this if anyone's interested), however, I'm having more trouble with going from string into array. The format I'm using for the string is: "[fruits:[a:orange,b:banana,c:apple],numbers:[0:[a:orange,b:banana,c:apple], 1:2,2:3,3:4,4:5,5:6],holes:[0:first,5:second,6:third]]" So, I've got brackets [] defining lists, and colons : defining key:value pairs. I've diddled around a bit with various approaches, mainly search & replace techniques, but I fear I'm going to have to crawl through the string one char at a time and evaluate whether it is a colon or bracket. I don't think that's going to be a very smooth solution. I can't believe no one has solved this (or a similar) problem before, so if you can comment, I'd be very grateful. Thanks, michael geary