cleanest way to skip a foreach if array is empty

Question

Not a major problem but I was wondering if there is a cleaner way to do this. It would be good to avoid nesting my code with an unnecessary if statement. If $items is empty php throws an error.

$items = array('a','b','c');

if(!empty($items)) { // <-Remove this if statement
  foreach($items as $item) {
    print $item;
  }
}

I could probably just use the '@' error suppressor, but that would be a bit hacky.

Answer 1

I wouldn't recommend suppressing the warning output. I would, however, recommend using is_array instead of !empty. If $items happens to be a nonzero scalar, then the foreach will still error out if you use !empty.

Answer 2

foreach((array)$items as $item) {}

Answer 3

$items = array('a','b','c');

if(is_array($items))) {
  foreach($items as $item) {
    print $item;
  }
}

Answer 4

I think the best approach here is to plan your code so that $items is always an array. The easiest solution is to initialize it at the top of your code with $items=array(). This way it will represent empty array even if you don't assign any value to it.

All other solutions are quite dirty hacks to me.

Answer 5

i've got the following function in my "standard library"

/// Convert argument to an array.
function a($a = null) {
    if(is_null($a))
        return array();
    if(is_array($a))
        return $a;
    if(is_object($a))
        return (array) $a;
    return $_ = func_get_args();
}

Basically, this does nothing with arrays/objects and convert other types to arrays. This is extremely handy to use with foreach statements and array functions

  foreach(a($whatever) as $item)....

  $foo = array_map(a($array_or_string)....

  etc