I am confused. Why does array_search skip the first element in an array?
in_array returns only booleans, array_search can return any values – is its because of that? For now it makes no sense to me.
Sample code below:
<?php
$array = array("Mac", "NT", "Linux");
if (in_array("Mac", $array)) {
echo "Ok n";
} else {
echo "Not ok n";
}
// output: Ok
if (array_search("Mac", $array)){
echo "Ok n";
} else {
echo "Not ok n";
}
// output: Not Ok
$arrayForArraySearch = array('', "Mac", "NT", "Linux"); // add first element
if (array_search("Mac", $arrayForArraySearch)){
echo "Ok n";
} else {
echo "Not ok n";
}
// output: Ok, but it's no longer first item
?>
2
It’s because array_search is returning 0 which is the index of “Mac” in the array. If the item is not found in the array, it will return false.
Always compare the result to false:
if (array_search("Mac", $array) !== false) {
...
}
As in the docs of the array_search function is mentioned, the key of the found element is returned. With your if condition this results in false, because the key of your element “Mac” is 0.
Change your condition to match not false => if (array_search("Mac", $array) !== false)
If you only need to know if the string is in the array, but don’t need the index, use in_array() rather than array_search(). It returns a boolean that you can test directly with if.
if (in_array("Mac", $array)) {
echo "OKn";
} else {
echo "Not OKn";
}