Using a string path to set nested array data

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?

Use the reference operator to get the successive existing arrays:

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

Based on alexisdm's response :

/**
 * Sets a value in a nested array based on path
 * See https://stackoverflow.com/a/9628276/419887
 *
 * @param array $array The array to modify
 * @param string $path The path in the array
 * @param mixed $value The value to set
 * @param string $delimiter The separator for the path
 * @return The previous value
 */
function set_nested_array_value(&$array, $path, &$value, $delimiter = '/') {
    $pathParts = explode($delimiter, $path);

    $current = &$array;
    foreach($pathParts as $key) {
        $current = &$current[$key];
    }

    $backup = $current;
    $current = $value;

    return $backup;
}