Question

Hi i am running the following code.

foreach ($response as $object) {

$basename = basename($object);

$structure = explode("/", $object);

echo $structure[0] . '<br>';


}

this returns the following.

MINOFSOUDUB412
MINOFSOUDUB412
MINOFSOUDUB412
MotionTracker.zip
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker
MotionTracker

i only want it to return one unique name like below

MINOFSOUDUB412
MotionTracker.zip
MotionTracker

Can someone help me with this

Thanks

Answer 1

You will get the best performance out of using the value as an array key:

$unique = array();
while (...) {
    $unique[$name] = true;
}
print_r(array_keys($unique);

This seems a bit crazy at first. After all, why use the string as an array key?

Well: $unique[$name] is O(1) (meaning no matter how large the array is it takes the same amount of time) whereas in_array($name, $unique) is O(n) meaning it grows with how many entries are in the array.

Just for reference the full version of it in your code would be:

$unique = array();

foreach ($response as $object) {
    $basename = basename($object);
    $structure = explode("/", $object);
    $unique[$structure[0]] = true;
    //You could also do: $unique[$structure[0]] = $structure[0];
    //Then your second foreach could be:
    //foreach ($unique as $name)
}

foreach ($unique as $name => $fake) { echo $name . '<br>'; }

The O(n) (slower version) would be:

$unique = array();
foreach ($response as $object) {
    $basename = basename($object);
    $structure = explode("/", $object);
    if (!in_array($structure[0], $unique)) {
        $unique[] = $structure[0];
    }
}

The slower version is slower, but people not intimately familiar with PHP arrays may find it a bit easier to read.