Question

I am trying to check whether an entry exists (one or more) in our database. However, even when I know there are no entries, I am getting an array which has a first entry of zero. Therefore it is not empty and I am not getting what I need.

Here’s my code:

    <?php
    $query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM table WHERE column = $yfbid_number AND timestamp BETWEEN (NOW()- Interval 1 DAY) AND NOW()");
    $array[] = array();
    while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($query)){
        $array[] = $row['column'];
    }
    ?>

When doing print_r on an array which should be empty, I am getting: ( [0] => Array ( ) ) and therefore count is 1 and not zero, which messes up my code. Any ideas how to get to a truly empty array in this situation?
I’d rather not delete this entry but avoid it in the first place, because in most use cases I will get either an empty array or one that only has one entry (a real entry), in which case I will want to easily distinguish between the two. (as it is now, both give a count of 1 entry, which is very bad for our porpuses). Thanks.

Answer 1

Change:

$array[] = array();

to

$array = array();

With your version, if $array doesn’t already exist, PHP will first create an array, then append an empty array to it. So you end up with a 1 element array whose only member is an empty array.