How to remove empty elements in array?

[Anon]

Hi guys!

Im pretty new to php and programming in general, and therefor not able to crack this one... 🙂

I have a function, that returns empty elements in an array, the array looks like this:

$the_array['','','something','something','']

Now how do i remove the empty elements, or the ''?

Its pretty easy to test if its empty:
if ($the_array[] == '') {do something, but what?}

Im completly lost, as to what loop to use and so forth... If somebody could reply in a human-readable fashion, it would be highly appriciated...

Regards; Brian Rene

[billzeller]

Hi,

Although there may be a simplier way to do this, I'd loop through each element, check to see if it's empty, and delete it if it is.

ie, (untested code, but you have the idea)
<?

for($i=0;$i<count($the_array);$i++){
if ($the_array[$i] == ''){
unset($the_array[$i]);
}
}

?>

Best Regards,
Bill Zeller

[Anon]

You'd need to walk through the array, and every time an element is empty, shift all the items further in the array down one. You could write each of these steps as two different functions to clean it up a bit.

Here's my quick shot at it, I haven't tested or compiled:

<?php
/********************
a function that shifts items
in array named $array
down by one from $array[$curindex]
onward.
returns the changed array.
********************/
function shiftdown($array, $curindex) {
$len = count($array); // length of array

// do it for each index from $curindex onward
for ($i = $curindex; $i < $len - 1; $i++) {
// copy next element to current one
$array[$i] = $array[$i + 1];
}
return $array;
}

/***************************
removes empty elements from $array
returns changed array
**************************/
function removeemptyelements($array) {
// find number of elements in array
$len = count ($array);
$i = 0; // counter
while ($i < $len) {
if ($array[$i] == "") {
// this element is empty
// shift it down
$array = shiftdown($array, $i);
$len--; // array is one shorter. change length count
}
$i++;
}
}

// testing code
$myarray = {"hi", "you", "" , "yes", "no"};
$myarray = removeemptyelements($myarray);

for ($i = 0; $i < count($array); $i++) {
echo $array[$i] . "\n";
}

?>

kind regards,
--harlan