Question

array one: 1,3,5,7
array two: 2,4,6,8

the array i want would be 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

I’m just using numbers as examples. If it was just numbers i could merge and sort but they will be words. So maybe something like

array one: bob,a,awesome

array two: is,really,dude

should read: bob is a really awesome dude

Not really sure how to do this. Does PHP have something like this built in?

Answer 1

You could write yourself a function like this:

function array_merge_alternating($array1, $array2) {
    if(count($array1) != count($array2)) {
        return false; // Arrays must be the same length
    }

    $mergedArray = array();

    while(count($array1) > 0) {
        $mergedArray[] = array_shift($array1);
        $mergedArray[] = array_shift($array2);
    }
    return $mergedArray;
}

This function expects two arrays with equal length and merges their values.

If you don’t need your values in alternating order you can use array_merge. array_merge will append the second array to the first and will not do what you ask.