Remove Duplicates From An Array In PHP

In programming, data management is a crucial factor to obtain accurate results. This task often involves removing redundancy, such as removing duplicates from arrays. In PHP, this can be achieved using built-in functions that the language provides.

Code snippet: Using array_unique()

The array_unique() function is a built-in function in PHP that is used to remove duplicate values from an array. The below code snippet does this effectively:

<?php
$originalArray = array("apple", "banana", "apple", "pear", "banana", "cherry");
$filteredArray = array_unique($originalArray);

print_r($filteredArray);
?>

Code Explanation for Using array_unique()

The code above is quite simple to understand. In the very first statement, we have declared our own PHP array $originalArray with some duplicate items in it. The next line is where we actually remove these duplicate values from our array.

The array_unique() function takes one array as its input, which is the array from which we want to remove duplicate values. Here, it’s our $originalArray. The function returns a new array that contains no duplicate values. We store this new array in the variable $filteredArray.

Lastly, we use print_r() function to print our newly created array, $filteredArray, to the screen. As opposed to the original array, this array doesn’t contain any duplicate items.

This is a simple yet efficient way of removing duplicate values from an array in PHP. However, It’s worth noting that array_unique() is not the most efficient way to remove duplicates from large arrays, as it has a complexity of O(n^2) in the worst-case scenario. For larger datasets, you might want to consider using other methods or sorting the array first.