Confusion between false and 0 arrays

Question

Basically I have the following code :

unset($items[array_search($i,$items)]);

When the key is not found the array_search returns false which is equivalent to returning 0, which results in deleting the element 0 of the array if an item value is not found.

Any Workaround for this?

Answer 1

$itemindex = array_search($i,$items);
if ($itemindex !== false) {
  unset($items[$itemindex]);
}

Using separate variable and strict comparison you will only run unset() if an item was actually found from the array. Using !== comparison to false you avoid confusing false with 0, since 0 is also a valid return value for array_search call, and in that case we do want to run unset().

Answer 2

if(($i = array_search($i,$items)) !== false) { 
    unset($items[$i]) 
}

is a possible workaround.

Answer 3

array_search returns the (first) key that contains the value, or false if the value is not present. That means you need to check for false before you call unset, like so:

$ix = array_search($i,$items)
if($ix !== false) {
    unset($items[$ix]);
}