In the previous exercise, we learned how to add single array elements and to change array elements at a given index. PHP also provides us with built-in methods for removing array elements, and for adding many elements at once.
The array_pop()
function takes an array as its argument. It removes the last element of an array and returns the removed element.
$my_array = ["tic", "tac", "toe"]; array_pop($my_array); // $my_array is now ["tic", "tac"] $popped = array_pop($my_array); // $popped is "tac" // $my_array is now ["tic"]
Note that array_pop()
doesn’t just set the last element to NULL
. It actually removes it from the array, meaning that array’s length will decrease by one (which we can verify using count()
).
The array_push()
function takes an array as its first argument. The arguments that follow are elements to be added to the end of the array. array_push()
adds each of the elements to the array and returns the new number of elements in the array.
$new_array = ["eeny"]; $num_added = array_push($new_array, "meeny", "miny", "moe"); echo $num_added; // Prints: 4 echo implode(", ", $new_array); // Prints: eeny, meeny, miny, moe
Let’s practice!
Instructions
We provided you an array $stack
. Use the array_push()
function to add two elements to the array: "blocker"
and "impediment"
.
Use the array_pop()
function to remove all but one element from the array.