How to delete element from array in php?

Question

I have done a lot of researching, and I cant find out how to delete an element from an array in PHP. In Java, if you have an ArrayList<SomeObject> list, you would say list.remove(someObject);.

Is there anything similar you can do in PHP? I have found unset($array[$index]);, but it doesnt seem to work.

Thanks for your help in advance!

• asprin: Define doesnt seem to work
• Adam Wright: unset is correct. How have you determined that it doesn't work?
• Nir: Unset works but maybe your index is an int and the index you use for unsetting is a string?
• ACetin: I'll define doesnt seem to work: When you use unset, I have read that the array doesnt get "reindexed". Then I used array_values($array); , but im not sure about if thats working either.
• Luca Rainone: See this stackoverflow.com/questions/5217721/…

Answer 1

unset should work, you can also try this:

$array = array_merge(
 array_slice($array, 0, $index),
 array_slice($array, $index+1)
 );

• pwolaq: slices array into 2 subarrays without the element that you want to remove and then merges them into one

Answer 2

You need to either remove it and remove the empty array:

function remove_empty($ar){
 $aar = array();
 while(list($key, $val) = each($ar)){
 if (is_array($val)){
 $val = remove_empty($val);
 if (count($val)!=0){
 $aar[$key] = $val;
 }
 }
 else {
 if (trim($val) != ""){
 $aar[$key] = $val;
 }
 }
 }
 unset($ar);
 return $aar;
}

remove_empty(array(1,2,3, '', 5)) returns array(1,2,3,5)

• ACetin: So if I have [1], [2], [3], [4], and i remove [2], i want the array to reindex the array, so instead of [1], [3], [4], i get [1], [2], [3]

Answer 3

unset($array[$index]); actually works.
The only issue I can think of is the way you're iterating this array.
just use foreach instead of for

also make sure that $index contains correct value

to test your array you can use var_dump():

$cars[0]="Volvo"; 
$cars[1]="BMW"; 
$cars[2]="Toyota"; 
unset($cars[0]);
var_dump($cars);

• ACetin: Lets say i have this array $cars[0]="Volvo"; $cars[1]="BMW"; $cars[2]="Toyota"; When i say unset($cars[0]), I only have [1] and [2] remaining, right?

Answer 4

If you want to delete just one array element you can use unset() or alternative array_splice()

Unset()
Example :

Code

<?php
 $array = array(0 => "x", 1 => "y", 2 => "z");
 unset($array[1]);
 //If you want to delete the second index ie, array[1]
?>

Output

Array (
 [0] => a
 [2] => c
)