How to merge subarray in PHP most easily?

Question

$arr[] = array(\'A\',\'B\');
$arr[] = array(\'C\',\'B\');
...

I need to get the merged result of all sub array of $arr .

And f

Answer 1

OK through another question I found out that the following is actually possible (I tried myself without success, I had the wrong version) if you use PHP version >= 5.3.0:

$merged_array = array_reduce($arr, 'array_merge', array());

---

If you only want unique values you can apply array_unique:

$unique_merged_array = array_unique($merged_array);

This works if you only have flat elements in the arrays (i.e. no other arrays). From the documentation:

Note: Note that array_unique() is not intended to work on multi dimensional arrays.

If you have arrays in your arrays then you have to check manually e.g. with array_walk:

$unique_values = array();

function unique_value($value, &$target_array) {
    if(!in_array($value, $target_array, true))
        $target_array[] = $value;
}

array_walk($merged_values, 'unique_value', $unique_values);

I think one can assume that the internal loops (i.e. what array_walk is doing) are at least not slower than explicit loops.