Array of strings to array of arrays

Question

I have an array of strings in PHP like this:

people = array("John","Kim");

I want to convert each of those strings into arrays themselves. Basically, I now want a 2-dimensional array like

people(John[],Kim[]);

I've been struggling with the implementation and am not sure how to do it.

what do you want those arrays to contain - the letters of the name, like ['j','o','h',n']? — Mike Schachter
– Mike Schachter, Commented Mar 18, 2012 at 2:50
So I'm eventually going to have a 4-dimensional array. people[names[purchases[number of that purchase]]]], like people[John[couch[2]]]]. I'm basically implementing a tree using arrays. — user1114864
– user1114864, Commented Mar 18, 2012 at 2:56
adding time and space? (4-dimensional is a misnomer - you have 2 dimension over, and down - height, and width. Some complex DBs add a 3rd dimension, time) — Eddie
– Eddie, Commented Mar 18, 2012 at 11:26
And even so, people[John[couch[2]]]] is not the best design, try something more meaningful using keys: {john:{purchase="chair",price="100",qty="2"},stephanie:{...} }, OR BETTER YET, use some people, and purchase objects instead. — Eddie
– Eddie, Commented Mar 18, 2012 at 11:32

Emil · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-18 21:07:04Z

1

$people = array_fill_keys(array("John","Kim"), array());

edited Mar 18, 2012 at 21:07

Emil

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answered Mar 18, 2012 at 4:17

Rob

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Comments

phpmeh · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-18 03:06:43Z

Based on your comment, you should be using a combination of keys or values if you want to do this with multi dimensional arrays (which I'm not sure is the best way, but can't say w/o further context).

$people = array(
   "john" => array()
   );

Then when you want to add products, just go like:

$people["john"]["couch"] = 3; // bought 3 times.
$people["john"][$item] = 0; // if you don't know the count yet for whatever reason.  You can always chagne it later the same way.

Now:

 foreach( $people as $person => $purchases ){
    echo UCFirst( $person );
    if( ! empty( $purchases ) ){
       echo ' has bought:<br />';
       foreach( $purchases as $item => $qty ){
          echo $item.' ('.$qty.')<br />';
       }
    }
 }

I would recommend always making your keys either uppercase or lowercase if you are going to use named. Your call though.

If you give us more code / context, there may be much better ways to do this stuff.

I basically have a list of people, and each item they have purchased, and how many of those items they have purchased. I'm outputting that information in csv to use with highcharts.js. A tree made the most sense in my head, but please let me know if there's a better way.

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