Question

I have an array in my PHP which I am iterating over twice, doing different things each time.
The array is called $data.
I have 2 foreach loops like this:

foreach($data as $item){
//doing stuff
}
foreach($data as $item){
//doing different stuff
}

I cant combine the 2 as this is how the application is but I want to move data into the $data array in the first iteration which will appear in the second iterations. The only way I could think of was below. e.g.

foreach($data as $item){
$data[]['new key']='my new data';
}
foreach($data as $item){
var_dump($item['new key']);//print 'my new data'
}

Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

Sounds like you want to pass array BY REFERENCE.
This means you are treating the array NOT like a typical array (a copy) but like a pointer to the $data array.
It is similar to how you might use an object (which is not a copy but an instance itself).

You can implement this with:

foreach($data as &$item){
    $item['new var'] ='my new data';
}

foreach($data as $item){
    var_dump($item['new key']);//print 'my new data'
}

hope that helps