Array position

[sivasankari_kv]

How do i find the position a key in an associative array

For example my array is

$arr["ins1.exe"] = "TDS1";
$arr["ins2.exe"] = "TDS2";
$arr["ins3.exe"] = "TDS3";
$arr["ins4.exe"] = "TDS4";

if i want to find the position of the key "ins2.exe" how do i find out

[Mordecai]

What do you mean by "position"?

[Weedpacket]

The key is the position.

[Mordecai]

Originally posted by Weedpacket
The key is the position.

I'm not sure if he meant the key or not, seeing as it's an assoc array, and the key is textual rather than numerical. Which explains my question...

o_o

[sivasankari_kv]

key "ins2.exe " is in the 2nd position of the array , given a associative key i have to get it's position in the array

[Mordecai]

$arr["ins1.exe"] = "TDS1";
$arr["ins2.exe"] = "TDS2";
$arr["ins3.exe"] = "TDS3";
$arr["ins4.exe"] = "TDS4";

Under this example, yes, it's in the second position. However, under this example:

$arr["ins3.exe"] = "TDS3";
$arr["ins4.exe"] = "TDS4";
$arr["ins2.exe"] = "TDS2";
$arr["ins1.exe"] = "TDS1";

... it is in the third. Because it is an associative array, the key is the only reference to location the array understands.

If they were always retrieved in the same order, however, you could:

for ($i=0;$i<count($arr);$i++) {
  if ($arr[$i] == "ins2.exe") {
    echo($i);
  }
}

However, this is not related to the key in any way, it's related to the order in which they are gathered.