Question

This is supposed to take any rows where ing_name is duplicated, combine the eff_name fields and delete the duplicate but it also has the side effect of changing the array from numeric to associative. My ajax is expecting numeric array.

for($i=count($recipe)-1; $i>0; $i--) {
    if($recipe[$i]['ing_name'] == $recipe[$i-1]['ing_name']) { //check for duplicate. **array must be sorted by ing_name**
        $recipe[$i-1]['eff_name'] .= ', '.$recipe[$i]['eff_name']; //Combine eff_name of duplicates
        $recipe[$i-1]['link'] = true;
        unset($recipe[$i]); //remove duplicate index
    }
}

examples: NUM, ASSOC

Source

EDIT: So i figured it must have something to do with unsetting the index so I did this and it seems to work ok:

$newRecipe = array();
foreach($recipe as $r) {
    $newRecipe[] = $r;
}

New question, is there a better way?

Answer 1

unset works with named keys. You could use array_splice instead, or get a brand new array after the loop with array_values (but that would be ugly!).