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

It depends. If want to remove an element without causing gaps in the indexes, you need to use array_splice:

$a = array('a','b','c', 'd');
array_splice($a, 2, 1);
var_dump($a);

Output:

array(3) {
  [0]=>
  string(1) "a"
  [1]=>
  string(1) "b"
  [2]=>
  string(1) "d"
}

Using unset can work, but this results in a non-continuous index. This can sometimes be a problem when you iterate over the array using count($a) - 1 as a measure of the upper bound:

$a = array('a','b','c', 'd');
unset($a[2]);
var_dump($a);

Output:

array(3) {
  [0]=>
  string(1) "a"
  [1]=>
  string(1) "b"
  [3]=>
  string(1) "d"
}

As you see, count is now 3 but the index of the last element is also 3.

My recommendation is therefore to use array_splice for arrays with numerical indexes, and use unset only for arrays (dictionaries really) with non-numerical indexes.