Question

My MySQL queries are returning arrays with duplicate entries: numbered keys and labeled keys with the same data inside. This may be standard, but it seems like a waste, and something that could cause problems if I’m printing values. I mean, not a huge problem, obviously. But I’m just curious if I can stop that. It seems unnecessary. For example:

Array(
    [0] => "Ted",
    [first_name] => "Ted",
    [1] => "Schmidlap",
    [last_name] => "Schmidlap"
)

And so on.

I’m pretty new to a lot of this, so this may be a simple question, but Googling doesn’t seem to have any answers for me. Anyone know the reason this happens? I’m using PHP’s PDO now, but I was doing it straight through the MySQL functions before and the same thing was happening, so I assume it’s a byproduct of MySQL interaction.

I can iterate through and unset the numeric ones, because I don’t need them, but they’re not really in the way right now, so that’s just an extra step. Still, is there a way to simply not have them fetched in the first place?

Answer 1

That depends on the function you are using.
Some functions return both types, others return only one of them.

If you are using PDOStatement->fetch, notice the optional $fetch_style argument it takes.