note 121089 deleted from language.operators.comparison by cmb

Note Submitter: fr at felix-riesterer dot de ---- I wanted to see if two arrays carry the same information even if they are technically different, so I created the following function. Hopefully this is useful to somebody. Note: This is a different approach than "rshawiii at yahoo dot com" has taken. <?php /** * function to compare the contents of two arrays * * This function returns true if all the following are true: * - arrays' values match * - arrays' keys match * - keys-value pairs are the same in both arrays * * The order of the key-value pairs does not matter, so even if * ($array1 == $array2) is technically false, this function might * still return true like in the following examples: * * $a = array(1, 5, 8); * $b = array(5, 1, 8); * => true * * $a = array('a' => 1, 'b' => 2, 'c' => 'xyz'); * $b = array('a' => 1, 'c' => 'xyz', 'b' => 2); * => true * * $a = array(4 => 1, 7 => 2, 12 => 'xyz'); * $b = array(9 => 2, 3 => 1, 123 => 'xyz'); * => false * * @param array * @param array * @return bool matching */ function same_array_contents($a, $b) { // easy if (count($a) != count($b)) { return false; } // complicated 1: different values $a_values = array_values($a); $b_values = array_values($b); sort($a_values); sort($b_values); if ($a_values != $b_values) { return false; } // complicated 2: different index names $a_keys = array_keys($a); $b_keys = array_keys($b); sort($a_keys); sort($b_keys); if ($a_keys != $b_keys) { return false; } // complicated 3 (same values and same keys): key => value different? $r = true; // expect match if (array_keys($a_keys) != $a_keys || array_keys($b_keys) != $b_keys ) { // associative array(s) foreach ($a_keys as $key) { if ($a[$key] != $b[$key]) { $r = false; } } } return $r; } ?>