True, array_unique does preserve keys, but if you are incrementing in a loop, then it will stop once the key values break numerical order. If you don't care about preserving keys, a life-saver (originally a headache) for me was...
<?php
$new_array = array_keys(array_flip($old_array));
?>
i used this little snip-it after results from preg_match_all() as a way to remove duplicates from an array and then re-organize the numerical keys ;)
*Only works on arrays with numerical keys.
array_flip
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
array_flip — Remplace les clés par les valeurs, et les valeurs par les clés
Description
array_flip() retourne un tableau dont les clés sont les valeurs du précédent tableau trans , et les valeurs sont les clés.
Notez bien que les valeurs de trans doivent être des clés valides, c'est-à -dire qu'elles doivent être des entiers (entier) ou des chaînes de caractères (chaîne de caractères). Une alerte sera émise si une valeur est d'un type qui ne convient pas et la paire en question ne sera pas inversée.
Si une valeur n'est pas unique, seule la dernière clé sera utilisée comme valeur, et toutes les autres seront perdues.
Liste de paramètres
- trans
-
Un tableau de paire clés/valeurs à inverser.
Valeurs de retour
Retourne un tableau inversé en cas de succès, FALSE si une erreur survient.
Exemples
Exemple #1 Exemple avec array_flip()
<?php
$trans = array_flip($trans);
$original = strtr($str, $trans);
?>
Exemple #2 Exemple avec array_flip() : collision
<?php
$trans = array("a" => 1, "b" => 1, "c" => 2);
$trans = array_flip($trans);
print_r($trans);
?>
maintenant, $trans vaut :
Array ( [1] => b [2] => c )
array_flip
29-Feb-2008 08:45
28-Aug-2007 06:21
In array_unique() user notes, you'll see that the flip flip use is faster than the array_unique() use for that purpose.
26-Apr-2007 10:37
In case anyone is wondering how array_flip() treats empty arrays:
<?php
print_r(array_flip(array()));
?>
results in:
Array
(
)
I wanted to know if it would return false and/or even chuck out an error if there were no key-value pairs to flip, despite being non-intuitive if that were the case. But (of course) everything works as expected. Just a head's up for the paranoid.
06-Mar-2007 07:13
It might seem obvious, but if you want to remove duplicates from an array, you can use array_flip() twice:
$arr = array_flip(array_flip($arr));
06-Feb-2006 11:42
Further deriving on benles -> crescentfreshpot, I think the following restatement of array_invert() reads much easier and probably runs faster, too. It does yield the same results:
function array_invert($arr) {
$flipped = array();
foreach ( $arr as $k => $a ) {
# put the value in the key, with a throw-away value. dups are inherently avoided,
# though overwritten. not sure if prefixing with if ( !isset($flipped[$a][$k]) )
# would speed this up or slow it down. probably depends on quantity of dups.
$flipped[$a][$k] = NULL;
}
foreach ( $flipped as $k => $fl ) {
# now make the keys the values.
$flipped[$k] = array_keys($fl);
}
return $flipped;
}
04-Jul-2005 01:21
Furthering benles note, if you don't want duplicate values to overwrite existing keys but need non-duplicate values to be assigned like array_flip, use:
<?php
function array_invert($arr)
{
$flipped = array();
foreach(array_keys($arr) as $key) {
if(array_key_exists($arr[$key],$flipped)) {
$flipped[$arr[$key]] = array_merge((array)$flipped[$arr[$key]], (array)$key);
} else {
$flipped[$arr[$key]] = $key;
}
}
return $flipped;
}
$a = array(
'orange' => 'fruit',
'milk' => 'dairy',
'apple' => 'fruit',
'banana' => 'fruit'
);
print_r(array_invert($a));
/*
Output:
Array
(
[fruit] => Array
(
[0] => orange
[1] => apple
[2] => banana
)
[dairy] => milk
)
*/
?>
06-Mar-2005 02:52
In case anyone wants a function that doesn't lose duplicates:
function array_invert($arr)
{
$res = Array();
foreach(array_keys($arr) as $key)
{
if (!array_key_exists($arr[$key], $res)) $res[$arr[$key]] = Array();
array_push($res[$arr[$key]], $key);
}
return $res;
}
23-Nov-2004 08:21
When you do array_flip, it takes the last key accurence for each value, but be aware that keys order in flipped array will be in the order, values were first seen in original array. For example, array:
[1] => 1
[2] => 2
[3] => 3
[4] => 3
[5] => 2
[6] => 1
[7] => 1
[8] => 3
[9] => 3
After flipping will become:
(first seen value -> first key)
[1] => 7
[2] => 5
[3] => 9
And not anything like this:
(last seen value -> last key)
[2] => 5
[1] => 7
[3] => 9
In my application I needed to find five most recently commented entries. I had a sorted comment-id => entry-id array, and what popped in my mind is just do array_flip($array), and I thought I now would have last five entries in the array as most recently commented entry => comment pairs. In fact it wasn't (see above, as it is the order of values used). To achieve what I need I came up with the following (in case someone will need to do something like that):
First, we need a way to flip an array, taking the first encountered key for each of values in array. You can do it with:
$array = array_flip(array_unique($array));
Well, and to achieve that "last comments" effect, just do:
$array = array_reverse($array, true);
$array = array_flip(array_unique($array));
$array = array_reverse($array, true);
In the example from the very beginning array will become:
[2] => 5
[1] => 7
[3] => 9
Just what I (and maybe you?) need. =^_^=
05-Aug-2003 11:42
I know a lot of people want a function to remove a key by value from an array. I saw solutions that iterate(!) though the whole array comparing value by value and then unsetting that value's key. PHP has a built-in function for pretty much everything (heard it will even cook you breakfast), so if you think "wouldn't it be cool if PHP had a function to do that...", odds are it already has. Check out this example. It takes a value, gets all keys for that value if it has duplicates, unsets them all, and returns a reindexed array.
<?php
$arr = array(11,12,13,12); // sample array
$arr = array_flip($arr);
unset($arr[12]);
$arr = array(array_keys($arr));
?>
$arr contains:
<?php
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[0] => 11
[1] => 13
)
?>
)
06-Mar-2003 08:58
If you need traspose an array (i.e convert columns in rows) for a multidimensional array obtain from a SQL query, try this:
That is an array from arrays that represent each columns.
Array
(
[col1] => Array
(
[0] => 10
[1] => 100
[2] => 200
[3] => a
)
[col2] => Array
(
[0] => 1
[1] => 3
[2] => 2
[3] => 5
)
)
<?php
$arreglo_aux = Array();
foreach( $arreglo as $keymaster => $value )
foreach( $value as $key => $elemento )
$arreglo_aux[$key][$keymaster] = $elemento;
?>
the results will be
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[col1] => 10
[col2] => 1
)
[1] => Array
(
[col1] => 100
[col2] => 3
)
[2] => Array
(
[col1] => 200
[col2] => 2
)
[3] => Array
(
[col1] => a
[col2] => 5
)
)
Bye.
Rodrigo González M. - CHILE
