note 15841 deleted from function.in-array by jimw

My above example gives false positives if elements of $needle are in $haystack, even if $needle doesn't appear in haystack in its entirety. Also it can't use scalars as $needle. Back to the drawing board... Here's an inside_array that will succeed if exactly $needle is anywhere within an array $haystack of any number of dimensions, where $needle is any type. function inside_array($needle, $haystack) { if ($needle === $haystack) return true; if (is_array($haystack)) { foreach($haystack as $haystack_element) { if ($needle === $haystack_element) { return true; } else { if (inside_array($needle, $haystack_element)) return true; } } } else { return false; } }