How do I declare a two dimensional array?

Question

What\'s the easiest way to create a 2d array. I was hoping to be able to do something similar to this:

declare int d[0..m, 0..n]

Answer 1

Firstly, PHP doesn't have multi-dimensional arrays, it has arrays of arrays.

Secondly, you can write a function that will do it:

function declare($m, $n, $value = 0) {
  return array_fill(0, $m, array_fill(0, $n, $value));
}

Answer 2

atli's answer really helped me understand this. Here is an example of how to iterate through a two-dimensional array. This sample shows how to find values for known names of an array and also a foreach where you just go through all of the fields you find there. I hope it helps someone.

$array = array(
    0 => array(
        'name' => 'John Doe',
        'email' => 'john@example.com'
    ),
    1 => array(
        'name' => 'Jane Doe',
        'email' => 'jane@example.com'
    ),
);

foreach ( $array  as $groupid => $fields) {
    echo "hi element ". $groupid . "\n";
    echo ". name is ". $fields['name'] . "\n";
    echo ". email is ". $fields['email'] . "\n";
    $i = 0;
    foreach ($fields as $field) {
         echo ". field $i is ".$field . "\n";
        $i++;
    }
}

Outputs:

hi element 0
. name is John Doe
. email is john@example.com
. field 0 is John Doe
. field 1 is john@example.com
hi element 1
. name is Jane Doe
. email is jane@example.com
. field 0 is Jane Doe
. field 1 is jane@example.com

Answer 3

And for me the argument about whether an array should be sparse or not depends on the context.

For example, if $a[6][9] is not populated is the equivalent to $a[6][9] being populated with for example with "" or 0.

Answer 4

You can also create an associative array, or a "hash-table" like array, by specifying the index of the array.

$array = array(
    0 => array(
        'name' => 'John Doe',
        'email' => 'john@example.com'
    ),
    1 => array(
        'name' => 'Jane Doe',
        'email' => 'jane@example.com'
    ),
);

Which is equivalent to

$array = array();

$array[0] = array();
$array[0]['name'] = 'John Doe';
$array[0]['email'] = 'john@example.com';

$array[1] = array();
$array[1]['name'] = 'Jane Doe';
$array[1]['email'] = 'jane@example.com';

Answer 5

Just declare? You don't have to. Just make sure variable exists:

$d = array();

Arrays are resized dynamically, and attempt to write anything to non-exsistant element creates it (and creates entire array if needed)

$d[1][2] = 3;

This is valid for any number of dimensions without prior declarations.

Answer 6

If you want to quickly create multidimensional array for simple value using one liner I would recommend using this array library to do it like this:

$array = Arr::setNestedElement([], '1.2.3', 'value');

which will produce

[
  1 => [
    2 => [
      3 => 'value'
    ]
  ]
]