Question

I have a PHP array like so:

$messages = [312, 401, 1599, 3, ...];

Given that the values in the array are unique, how can I delete the element with a given value (without knowing its key)?

Answer 1

Using array_search() and unset, try the following:

if (($key = array_search($del_val, $messages)) !== false) {
    unset($messages[$key]);
}

array_search() returns the key of the element it finds, which can be used to remove that element from the original array using unset(). It will return FALSE on failure, however it can return a false-y value on success (your key may be 0 for example), which is why the strict comparison !== operator is used.

The if() statement will check whether array_search() returned a value, and will only perform an action if it did.