What is the best way to delete array item in PHP?

Question

Could you tell me your way to delete an item from array? Do you think it\'s good?

Answer 1

That depends:

$a1 = array('a' => 1, 'b' => 2, 'c' => 3);
unset($a1['b']);
// array('a' => 1, 'c' => 3)

$a2 = array(1, 2, 3);
unset($a2[1]);
// array(0 => 1, 2 => 3)
// note the missing index 1

// solution 1 for numeric arrays
$a3 = array(1, 2, 3);
array_splice($a3, 1, 1);
// array(0 => 1, 1 => 3)
// index is now continous

// solution 2 for numeric arrays
$a4 = array(1, 2, 3);
unset($a4[1]);
$a4 = array_values($a4);
// array(0 => 1, 1 => 3)
// index is now continous

Generally unset() is safe for hashtables (string-indexed arrays), but if you have to rely on continous numeric indexes you'll have to use either array_splice() or a combination of unset() and array_values().