How to find a value in array and remove it by using PHP array functions

Question

How to find a value exist in an array and how to remove it. If any php builtin array functions for doing this. After removing I need the sequential index order. any body knows please help me.

Answer 1

To search an element in an array, you can use array_search function and to remove an element from an array you can use unset function. Ex:

<?php
$hackers = array ('Alan Kay', 'Peter Norvig', 'Linus Trovalds', 'Larry Page');

print_r($hackers);

// Search
$pos = array_search('Linus Trovalds', $hackers);

echo 'Linus Trovalds found at: ' . $pos;

// Remove from array
unset($hackers[$pos]);

print_r($hackers);
?>

You can refer: http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.array.php for more array related functions.

Answer 2

<?php
$my_array = array('sheldon', 'leonard', 'howard', 'penny');
$to_remove = array('howard');
$result = array_diff($my_array, $to_remove);
?>

Answer 3

You need to find the key of the array first, this can be done using array_search()

Once done, use the unset()

<?php
$array = array( 'apple', 'orange', 'pear' );

unset( $array[array_search( 'orange', $array )] );
?>

Answer 4

Just in case you want to use any of mentioned codes, be aware that array_search returns FALSE when the "needle" is not found in "haystack" and therefore these samples would unset the first (zero-indexed) item. Use this instead:

<?php
$haystack = Array('one', 'two', 'three');
if (($key = array_search('four', $haystack)) !== FALSE) {
  unset($haystack[$key]);
}
var_dump($haystack);

The above example will output:

Array
(
    [0] => one
    [1] => two
    [2] => three
)

And that's good!

Answer 5

This solution is the combination of @Peter's solution for deleting multiple occurences and @chyno solution for removing first occurence. That's it what I'm using.

/**
 * @param array $haystack
 * @param mixed $value
 * @param bool $only_first
 * @return array
 */
function array_remove_values(array $haystack, $needle = null, $only_first = false)
{
    if (!is_bool($only_first)) { throw new Exception("The parameter 'only_first' must have type boolean."); }
    if (empty($haystack)) { return $haystack; }

    if ($only_first) { // remove the first found value
        if (($pos = array_search($needle, $haystack)) !== false) {
            unset($haystack[$pos]);
        }
    } else { // remove all occurences of 'needle'
        $haystack = array_diff($haystack, array($needle));
    }

    return $haystack;
}

Also have a look here: PHP array delete by value (not key)

Answer 6

One function that hasn't been mentioned is array_filter. You just have to pass a callback function that takes each element as an argument and returns true or false if that element should stay or be removed. This also has the benefit of removing duplicate values.

You can use it like this:

$myArray = array('one', 'two', 'deleteme', 'three');
$output = array_filter($myArray, function($val) { return $val != 'deleteme'; });

And if you want to re-index the array, you can pass the result to array_values like so:

$output = array_values($output);

Answer 7

First of all, as others mentioned, you will be using the "array_search()" & the "unset()" methodsas shown below:-

<?php
$arrayDummy = array( 'aaaa', 'bbbb', 'cccc', 'dddd', 'eeee', 'ffff', 'gggg' );
unset( $arrayDummy[array_search( 'dddd', $arrayDummy )] ); // Index 3 is getting unset here.
print_r( $arrayDummy ); // This will show the indexes as 0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6.
?>

Now to re-index the same array, without sorting any of the array values, you will need to use the "array_values()" method as shown below:-

<?php
$arrayDummy = array_values( $arrayDummy );
print_r( $arrayDummy ); // Now, you will see the indexes as 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
?>

Hope it helps.

Answer 8

This is how I would do it:

$terms = array('BMW', 'Audi', 'Porsche', 'Honda');
// -- purge 'make' Porsche from terms --
if (!empty($terms)) {
    $pos = '';
    $pos = array_search('Porsche', $terms);
    if ($pos !== false) unset($terms[$pos]);
}

Answer 9

To find and remove multiple instance of value in an array, i have used the below code

$list = array(1,3,4,1,3,1,5,8);

$new_arr=array();

foreach($list as $value){

    if($value=='1')
    {
        continue;
    }
    else
    {
        $new_arr[]=$value;
    }     
}


print_r($new_arr);