Question

I want to remove an element from a PHP array (and shrink the array size). Just looking at the PHP docs, it seems this can be done using array_slice() and array_merge()

so I am guessing (off the top of my head) that some combination of array_merge() and array_slice will work. However, array_slice() requires an index (not a key), so I’m not sure how to quickly cobble these functions together for a solution.

Has anyone implemented such a function before?. I’m sure it must be only a few lines long, but I cant somehow get my head around it (its been one of those days) …

Actually, I just came up with this cheesy hack when writing up this question….

function remove_from_array(array $in, value) {
   return array_diff($in, (array)$value);
}

too ugly? or will it work (without any shocking side effects)?

Answer 1

This functionality already exists; take a look at unset.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.unset.php

$a = array('foo' => 'bar', 'bar' => 'gork');
unset($a['bar']);
print_r($a);

output will be:

array(
[foo] => bar
)