Determine number of Dimensions in a PHP Array

Question

Is there a way to determine how many dimensions there are in a PHP array?

Answer 1

Nice problem, here is a solution I stole from the PHP Manual:

function countdim($array)
{
    if (is_array(reset($array)))
    {
        $return = countdim(reset($array)) + 1;
    }

    else
    {
        $return = 1;
    }

    return $return;
}

Answer 2

you can try this:

$a["one"]["two"]["three"]="1";

function count_dimension($Array, $count = 0) {
   if(is_array($Array)) {
      return count_dimension(current($Array), ++$count);
   } else {
      return $count;
   }
}

print count_dimension($a);

Answer 3

Like most procedural and object-oriented languages, PHP does NOT natively implement multi-dimensional arrays - it uses nested arrays.

The recursive function suggested by others are messy, but the nearest thing to an answer.

C.

Answer 4

This one works for arrays where each dimension doesn't have the same type of elements. It may need to traverse all elements.

$a[0] = 1;
$a[1][0] = 1;
$a[2][1][0] = 1;

function array_max_depth($array, $depth = 0) {
    $max_sub_depth = 0;
    foreach (array_filter($array, 'is_array') as $subarray) {
        $max_sub_depth = max(
            $max_sub_depth,
            array_max_depth($subarray, $depth + 1)
        );
    }
    return $max_sub_depth + $depth;
}