Question

I have the following array:

$masterlist=[$companies][$fieldsofcompany][0][$number]

The third dimension only exists if the field selected from $fieldsofcompany = position 2 which contains the numbers array. Other positions contain regular variables. The 3rd dimension is always 0 (the numbers array) or Null. Position 4 contains numbers.

I want to cycle through all companies and remove from the $masterlist all companies which contain duplicate numbers.

My current implementation is this code:

for($i=0;$i<count($masterlist);$i++)
    {   
        if($masterlist[$i][2][0][0] != null)

        $id = $masterlist[$i][0];

        for($j=0;$j<count($masterlist[$i][2][0]);$j++)
        {
            $number = $masterlist[$i][2][0][$j];

            $query = "INSERT INTO numbers VALUES('$id','$number')";
            mysql_query($query);
        }
    }

Which inserts numbers and associated IDs into a table. I then select unique numbers like so:

SELECT ID,number
FROM numbers
GROUP BY number
HAVING (COUNT(number)=1)

This strikes me as incredibly brain-dead. My question is what is the best way to do this? I’m not looking for code per se, but approaches to the problem. For those of you who have read this far, thank you.

Answer 1

For starters, you should prune the data before sticking it into the database.

Keep a look up table that keeps track of the ‘number’.

If the number is not in the look up table then use it and mark it, otherwise if its in the look up table you can ignore it.

Using an array for the look up table and with keys being the ‘number’ you can use the isset function to test if the number has appeared before or not.

Example pseudo code:

if(!isset($lookupTable[$number])){
    $lookupTable[$number]=1;
    //...Insert into database...
}