Question

I found and adapted an example which scans an array for an entry like so:

$ignoredFileTypes = array('svn','fla','bak','db');
if( array_search('.fla',$ignoredFileTypes) > -1 ){
    return true;
}

It worked well for my initial needs.

Now, I am trying to join two arrays like so:

$ignoredFileTypes = array('svn','fla','bak','db');
$customIgnoredFileTypes = array('txt', 'xsd');
$ignoredFileTypes = array_merge( $ignoredFileTypes , $customIgnoredFileTypes );

Unfortunately, that generates a warning like so:

Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #1 is not an array in C:\wamp\www\packager.php on line 41

So a couple of questions:

1. Is using the above array creation syntax incorrect?
2. How can I properly create these two arrays so that they can be merged?

Thanks!
d

Answer 1

Your arrays aren’t “valueless”, they are just numeric arrays. The values are the strings ('svn', 'fla', etc.).

The PHP docs for array_merge says:

Values in the input array with numeric keys will be renumbered with incrementing keys starting from zero in the result array.

The syntax you posted…

<?php

$ignoredFileTypes = array('svn','fla','bak','db');
$customIgnoredFileTypes = array('txt', 'xsd');
$ignoredFileTypes = array_merge( $ignoredFileTypes , $customIgnoredFileTypes );
print_r($ignoredFileTypes);

Works perfectly for me:

Array
(
    [0] => svn
    [1] => fla
    [2] => bak
    [3] => db
    [4] => txt
    [5] => xsd
)