Tabbed data from textarea conversion to array & nested html

tabs2html.utils.php

<?php
class Utils
{
	public static function tabs2array($list, $indentation = '	') {
		$result = array();
		$path = array();
		$list = str_replace("\r", "", $list);
		foreach (explode("\n", $list) as $line) {
			$depth = 0;
			while (substr($line, 0, strlen($indentation)) === $indentation) {
				$depth += 1;
				$line = substr($line, strlen($indentation));
			}
			while ($depth < sizeof($path)) {
				array_pop($path);
			}
			$path[$depth] = $line;
			$parent =& $result;
			foreach ($path as $depth => $key) {
				if (!isset($parent[$key])) {
					$parent[$line] = array();
					break;
				}
				$parent =& $parent[$key];
			}
		}
		return Utils::array2html($result);
	}

	public static function array2html(Array $array = array(), $tag ="ol", $first_level = true)
	{
		/* https://jsfiddle.net/MarcosBL/b3bzzk1y/ */
		$buffer = '<'.$tag.'>';
		foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
			$buffer .= '<li>' . trim( $first_level ? "<strong>".$key."</strong>" : $key);
			if (is_array($value)) {
				$buffer .= Utils::array2html($value, $tag, false);
			}
			$buffer .= '</li>';
		}
		$buffer .= '</'.$tag.'>';
		return $buffer;
	}
}

I see something weird here. From a function called "tabs2array" I'd expect it returns an array... ;)

Thanks for sharing 👍