Question

I have 2 multidimentional arrays:

array1[0][0] = 'yes';
array1[0][1] = 'no';
array1[1][0] = 'gilbert';
array1[1][1] = 'duncan';

and

array2[0][0] = 'good';
array2[0][1] = 'bad';
array2[1][0] = 'vegetables';
array2[1][1] = 'chocolate';

I want to create a new array from this 2 arrays such that:

array3[0][0] = 'yes';
array3[0][1] = 'no';
array3[0][2] = 'good';
array3[0][3] = 'bad';
array3[1][0] = 'gilbert';
array3[1][1] = 'duncan';
array3[1][2] = 'vegetables';
array3[1][3] = 'chocolate';

I am using PHP. How do I achieve this. PHP array_merge() appends one array to another. What I want is to create a new array with the two arrays side by side.

Answer 1

You’ll need to just walk them. You’ve defined a fairly specific (and interesting) way of merging them. I’d probably recommend a function like this:

function my_combine_arrays()
{
    // This lets us accept N arrays as an input.
    $arrList = func_get_args();
    $retval = array();
    foreach ($arrList as $array)
    {
        // Note the $key here.  If the arrays have different key types
        // like an assoc, you may have issues.
        foreach ($array as $key=>$arrsub)
        {
           foreach ($arrsub as $arritem)
           {
               $retval[$key][] = $arritem;
           }
        }
    }
    return $retval;
}