Get first element of array

Question

Hi !

I have an array:

array( 4 => 'apple', 7 => 'orange', 13 => 'plum' )

I would like to get first element of this array. Expected result: string apple

One requirement: it cannot be done with passing by reference, so array_shift is not good solution.

Any ideas ?

Answer 1

$arr = $array = array( 9 => 'apple', 7 => 'orange', 13 => 'plum' );
reset($arr);
echo current($arr); // echoes 'apple'

if you don't want to loose the current pointer position, just create an alias for the array.

Answer 2

kludgy answer:

$foo = array( 4 => 'apple', 7 => 'orange', 13 => 'plum' );

function get_first ($foo) {
    foreach ($foo as $k=>$v){
     return $v;
    }
}

print get_first($foo);

Answer 3

can be done this way too:

$array = array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);
$output = array_slice($array, 1);
print_r ($output);

Answer 4

I think using array_values would be your best bet here. You could return the value at index zero from the result of that function to get 'apple'.

Answer 5

array_shift(array_values($array));