Move an array element to a new index in PHP

Question

I\'m looking for a simple function to move an array element to a new position in the array and resequence the indexes so that there are no gaps in the sequence. It doesnt ne

Answer 1

Arrays in PHP are not actual array in the C sens but associative arrays. But the way to move a value from an index to another is quiet straight forward and is the same as in C++:

Copy the value to move to a temporary buffer, translate all the elements to crush the empty spot at the source position and in the same free up a spot on the destination position. Put the backup value in the destination spot.

function moveElement ($a , $i , $j)
{
      $tmp =  $a[$i];
      if ($i > $j)
      {
           for ($k = $i; $k > $j; $k--) {
                $a[$k] = $a[$k-1]; 
           }        
      }
      else
      { 
           for ($k = $i; $k < $j; $k++) {
                $a[$k] = $a[$k+1];
           }
      }
      $a[$j] = $tmp;
      return $a;
}


$a = array(0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
print_r($a);

$a = moveElement($a, 1, 4);
echo ('1 ->  4');
print_r($a);


$a = moveElement($a, 5, 0);
echo ('5 ->  0' );
print_r($a);

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => 0
    [1] => 1
    [2] => 2
    [3] => 3
    [4] => 4
    [5] => 5
)
1 ->  4Array
(
    [0] => 0
    [1] => 2
    [2] => 3
    [3] => 4
    [4] => 1
    [5] => 5
)
5 ->  0Array
(
    [0] => 5
    [1] => 0
    [2] => 2
    [3] => 3
    [4] => 4
    [5] => 1
)

You'll need to add some Exception handling to have a complete code.