Get the first element of an array

Question

I have an array:

array( 4 => \'apple\', 7 => \'orange\', 13 => \'plum\' )

I would like to get the first element of this array. Expect

Answer 1

Original answer, but costly (O(n)):

array_shift(array_values($array));

In O(1):

array_pop(array_reverse($array));

Other use cases, etc...

If modifying (in the sense of resetting array pointers) of $array is not a problem, you might use:

reset($array);

This should be theoretically more efficient, if a array "copy" is needed:

array_shift(array_slice($array, 0, 1));

With PHP 5.4+ (but might cause an index error if empty):

array_values($array)[0];