Question

What’s the best way to search for consecutive values in an array?

For example, searching for array('a', 'b') in array('x', 'a', 'b', 'c') would yield 1, because the values first appear consecutively at that index.

Answer 1

Haven’t tested this, but something like this should do:

function consecutive_values(array $needle, array $haystack) {
    $i_max = count($haystack)-count($needle);
    $j_max = count($needle);
    for($i=0; $i<$i_max; ++$i) {
        $match = true;
        for($j=0; $j<$j_max; ++$j) {
            if($needle[$j]!=$haystack[$i+$j]) {
                $match = false;
                break;
            }
        }
        if($match) {
            return $i;
        }
    }
    return -1;
}