When trying to splice an associative array into another, array_splice is missing two key ingredients:
- a string key for identifying the offset
- the ability to preserve keys in the replacement array
This is primarily useful when you want to replace an item in an array with another item, but want to maintain the ordering of the array without rebuilding the array one entry at a time.
<?php
function array_splice_assoc(&$input, $offset, $length, $replacement) {
$replacement = (array) $replacement;
$key_indices = array_flip(array_keys($input));
if (isset($input[$offset]) && is_string($offset)) {
$offset = $key_indices[$offset];
}
if (isset($input[$length]) && is_string($length)) {
$length = $key_indices[$length] - $offset;
}
$input = array_slice($input, 0, $offset, TRUE)
+ $replacement
+ array_slice($input, $offset + $length, NULL, TRUE);
}
$fruit = array(
'orange' => 'orange',
'lemon' => 'yellow',
'lime' => 'green',
'grape' => 'purple',
'cherry' => 'red',
);
array_splice_assoc($fruit, 'lemon', 'grape', array('apple' => 'red'));
array_splice_assoc($fruit, 'cherry', 1, array('strawberry' => 'red'));
?>
Note: I have not tested this with negative offsets and lengths.
