in_array() and multidimensional array

Question

I use in_array() to check whether a value exists in an array like below,

$a = array(\"Mac\", \"NT\", \"Irix\", \"Linux\");
if (in_array(\"Irix\"         


        

Answer 1

Here is my proposition based on json_encode() solution with :

• case insensitive option
• returning the count instead of true
• anywhere in arrays (keys and values)

If word not found, it still returns 0 equal to false.

function in_array_count($needle, $haystack, $caseSensitive = true) {
    if(!$caseSensitive) {
        return substr_count(strtoupper(json_encode($haystack)), strtoupper($needle));
    }
    return substr_count(json_encode($haystack), $needle);
}

Hope it helps.