Question

PHP’s list keyword is nice for taking out variables from an array $a as below

    $a = array(1,22);
    list($b, $c) = $a;
    var_dump("$a $b $c");

But for array $a2 in the form of key => value as below, I failed to use list

    $a2 = array('b'=>1,'c'=>22);
    list($b, $c) = $a2;
    list($bkey, $b, $ckey, $c) = $a2;
    list( list($bkey, $b), list($ckey,$c) ) = $a2;

    var_dump("$a2 $b $c");

All of the three above assignments fail. I give up.

If you know how to get the key & value in array $a2, please help!

Answer 1

Following the comment of Mr Evil below (Col Shrapnel, see his profile), I never said following two ways are different, one could use either but I have advised using these methods on user-inputted data could create security problems, use it on your own risk or if there is no user-inputted data.

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It does not seem to work with associatieve arrays, you can do something like this though:

foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
     $$key = $value;
}

Example:

$a2 = array('b'=>1,'c'=>22);
foreach ($a2 as $key => $value) {
     $$key = $value;
}

echo $b . '<br>';
echo $c;

Result:

1
22

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One could also use extract() function but I generally avoid it because using it on user-inputted values could create security hazards. Depending on your choice, you might want to use it or if data isn’t coming from users side.