Remove duplicated elements of associative array in PHP

Question

$result = array(
    0=>array('a'=>1,'b'=>'Hello'),
    1=>array('a'=>1,'b'=>'other'),
    2=>array('a'=>1,'b'=>'other'),
);

If it is duplicated removed it, so the result is as follows:

$result = array(
    0=>array('a'=>1,'b'=>'Hello'),
    1=>array('a'=>1,'b'=>'other')   
);

Could any know to do this?

Thanks

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13857775/remove-duplicated-elements-of-associative-array-in-php

Answer 1

Regardless what others are offering here, you are looking for a function called array_unique^Docs. The important thing here is to set the second parameter to SORT_REGULAR and then the job is easy:

array_unique($result, SORT_REGULAR);

The meaning of the SORT_REGULAR flag is:

compare items normally (don't change types)

And that is what you want. You want to compare arrays^Docs here and do not change their type to string (which would have been the default if the parameter is not set).

array_unique does a strict comparison (=== in PHP), for arrays this means:

$a === $b TRUE if $a and $b have the same key/value pairs in the same order and of the same types.

Output (Demo):

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [a] => 1
            [b] => Hello
        )

    [1] => Array
        (
            [a] => 1
            [b] => other
        )
)