Question

How can I get the last element of an array without changing its internal pointer?

What i’m doing is:

while(list($key, $value) = each($array)) {  
    //do stuff  
    if($condition) {  
        //Here I want to check if this is the last element of the array            
        prev($array);  
    }  
}

so end($array) would mess things up.

Answer 1

Warning: this accepted answer is outdated and now triggers the following error. The PHP manual for the end() specifically says that function’s parameter is passed by reference because it is modified by the function. This means you must pass it a real variable and not a function returning an array because only actual variables may be passed by reference.

Notice: Only variables should be passed by reference

It’s simple, you could use:

$lastElementKey = end(array_keys($array));
while(list($key, $value) = each($array)) {  
    //do stuff  
    if($key == $lastElementKey) {  
        //Here I want to check if this is the last element of the array            
        prev($array);  
    }  
}