I mean if we give 3, b as parameters passed into function, it should return "bbb" by using loops.
I've tried some code, but I do not want to post it because it might look crazy for a well-versed developer. I can provide you links, this question has been asked in an interview, mainly they want it to be computed in C or C++. Since I am a PHP practitioner, I am curious to know it is possible in PHP. Below is the link (ROUND 2: SIMPLE CODING(3 hours))
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/zoho-interview-set-3-campus/
A PHP function to do that would probably look like this:
function string_repeat($num, $string)
{
$result = "";
for ($x = 0; $x < $num; $x++) {
$result .= $string;
}
return $result;
}
So calling echo string_repeat(3, 'b'); would output:
bbb
One way would be to keep around a "dummy" string, of sufficient length to be longer than any string you want to generate. Then, we can use preg_replace to replace each character with whatever the input is. Finally, we can substring that replace string to the desired length.
$dummy = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
$length = 3;
$dummy = preg_replace('/./', 'b', $dummy);
$output = substr($dummy, 0, $length);
echo $output;
This prints:
bbb
You could wrap this into a helper function, if you really wanted to do that. Note that internally the regex engine is most likely doing some looping of its own, so we are not really freeing ourselves from looping, just hiding it from the current context.
I'm using the following code to pull the definition of a word from a tab-delimited file with only two columns (word, definition). Is this the most efficient code for what I'm trying to do?
<?php
$haystack = file("dictionary.txt");
$needle = 'apple';
$flipped_haystack = array_flip($haystack);
foreach($haystack as $value)
{
$haystack = explode("\t", $value);
if ($haystack[0] == $needle)
{
echo "Definition of $needle: $haystack[1]";
$defined = "1";
break;
}
}
if($defined != "1")
{
echo "$needle not found!";
}
?>
Right now you're doing a lot of pointless work
1) load the file into a per-line array
2) flip the array
3) iterate over and explode every value of the array
4) test that exploded value
You can't really avoid step 1, but why do you have to do all that useless "busy work" for 2&3?
e.g. if your dictionary text was set up something like this:
word:definition
then a simple:
$matches = preg_grep('/^$word:(.*)$/', $haystack);
would do the trick for you, with far less code.
No. Most likely a trie is more efficient and you didn't sort your dictionary and it doesn't use a binary tree or ternary tree. I guess if you need to search in a huge dictionary your method is simply too slow.
Is this the most efficient code for what I'm trying to do?
Surely not.
To find only one needle you are processing all the entries.
I will be building up to have 100,000+ entries.
use a database then.
Suppose a string:
$str = 'a_b_c';
I want match all possible combination with a, b, c with above. For example:
b_a_c, c_a_b, a_c_b..etc will be give true when compare with above $str.
NOTE:
$str may be random. eg: a_b, k_l_m_n etc
I would split your string into an array, and then compare it to an array of elements to match on.
$originalList = explode('_', 'a_b_c');
$matchList = array('a', 'b', 'c');
$diff = array_diff($matchList, $originalList);
if (!empty($diff)) {
// At least one of the elements in $matchList is not in $originalList
}
Beware of duplicate elements and what not, depending on how your data comes in.
Documentation:
array_diff()
explode()
There is no builtin way to quickly do this. Your task can be accomplished many different ways which will vary on how general they are. You make no mention of null values or checking the formatting of the string, so something like this might work for your purpose:
function all_combos($str,$vals) {
$s=explode("_",$str);
foreach($s as $c) {
if(!in_array($s,$vals)) return false;
}
return true;
}
Call like all_combos("b_c_a",array("a","b","c"));
Which would be the right way of declaring an array inside a loop with regard to below example.
method 1:
$string = array();
for($i=0;$i<5;$i++)
{
$string[] = $i;
}
method 2:
$string = array();
for($i=0;$i<5;$i++)
{
$string = $i;
}
method 3:
for($i=0;$i<5;$i++)
{
$string[] = $i;
}
option a would be the best:
$string = array();
for($i=0;$i<5;$i++)
{
$string[] = $i;
}
this is because just in case u want to use $string later and you did not do anything in the loop, it still exists and you wont hit an error
1 and 3 will work, while 2 will overwrite the value of string every time.
1 is clearer but, if that's all there is in the loop, quite unnecessarily verbose.
Also, that variable name made me wonder: you don't plan to make a string out of that array, do you? In case, there's a better way.
I see you needed a string. In that case, what you should do is
$string = '';
for($i=0;$i<5;$i++) {
$string .= $i;
}
.= is a concatenation operator; appends right-side argument to left-side argument.
The first one is the best method .
second one just override the value and last value will be stored
and the third one is not declaring array that cause the php performance to be low. in this case php first create the array and then assign the value which is not a optimized way and take more time to executed php and at the last it take much time to execute your php script.
so first one is the best
What is the best way to generate an MD5 (or any other hash) of a multi-dimensional array?
I could easily write a loop which would traverse through each level of the array, concatenating each value into a string, and simply performing the MD5 on the string.
However, this seems cumbersome at best and I wondered if there was a funky function which would take a multi-dimensional array, and hash it.
(Copy-n-paste-able function at the bottom)
As mentioned prior, the following will work.
md5(serialize($array));
However, it's worth noting that (ironically) json_encode performs noticeably faster:
md5(json_encode($array));
In fact, the speed increase is two-fold here as (1) json_encode alone performs faster than serialize, and (2) json_encode produces a smaller string and therefore less for md5 to handle.
Edit: Here is evidence to support this claim:
<?php //this is the array I'm using -- it's multidimensional.
$array = unserialize('a:6:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:3:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}i:2;a:3:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}i:2;a:0:{}}}i:2;s:5:"hello";i:3;a:2:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}}i:4;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:0:{}}}}}}}i:5;a:5:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:4:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}i:2;a:3:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}i:2;a:0:{}}i:3;a:6:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:3:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}i:2;a:3:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}i:2;a:0:{}}}i:2;s:5:"hello";i:3;a:2:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}}i:4;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:0:{}}}}}}}i:5;a:5:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:3:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}i:2;a:3:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}i:2;a:0:{}}}i:2;s:5:"hello";i:3;a:2:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}}i:4;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:0:{}}}}}}}}}}i:2;s:5:"hello";i:3;a:2:{i:0;a:0:{}i:1;a:0:{}}i:4;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:1:{i:0;a:0:{}}}}}}}}}');
//The serialize test
$b4_s = microtime(1);
for ($i=0;$i<10000;$i++) {
$serial = md5(serialize($array));
}
echo 'serialize() w/ md5() took: '.($sTime = microtime(1)-$b4_s).' sec<br/>';
//The json test
$b4_j = microtime(1);
for ($i=0;$i<10000;$i++) {
$serial = md5(json_encode($array));
}
echo 'json_encode() w/ md5() took: '.($jTime = microtime(1)-$b4_j).' sec<br/><br/>';
echo 'json_encode is <strong>'.( round(($sTime/$jTime)*100,1) ).'%</strong> faster with a difference of <strong>'.($sTime-$jTime).' seconds</strong>';
JSON_ENCODE is consistently over 250% (2.5x) faster (often over 300%) -- this is not a trivial difference. You may see the results of the test with this live script here:
http://nathanbrauer.com/playground/serialize-vs-json.php
http://nathanbrauer.com/playground/plain-text/serialize-vs-json.php
Now, one thing to note is array(1,2,3) will produce a different MD5 as array(3,2,1). If this is NOT what you want. Try the following code:
//Optionally make a copy of the array (if you want to preserve the original order)
$original = $array;
array_multisort($array);
$hash = md5(json_encode($array));
Edit: There's been some question as to whether reversing the order would produce the same results. So, I've done that (correctly) here:
http://nathanbrauer.com/playground/json-vs-serialize.php
http://nathanbrauer.com/playground/plain-text/json-vs-serialize.php
As you can see, the results are exactly the same. Here's the (corrected) test originally created by someone related to Drupal:
http://nathanjbrauer.com/playground/drupal-calculation.php
http://nathanjbrauer.com/playground/plain-text/drupal-calculation.php
And for good measure, here's a function/method you can copy and paste (tested in 5.3.3-1ubuntu9.5):
function array_md5(Array $array) {
//since we're inside a function (which uses a copied array, not
//a referenced array), you shouldn't need to copy the array
array_multisort($array);
return md5(json_encode($array));
}
md5(serialize($array));
I'm joining a very crowded party by answering, but there is an important consideration that none of the extant answers address. The value of json_encode() and serialize() both depend upon the order of elements in the array!
Here are the results of not sorting and sorting the arrays, on two arrays with identical values but added in a different order (code at bottom of post):
serialize()
1c4f1064ab79e4722f41ab5a8141b210
1ad0f2c7e690c8e3cd5c34f7c9b8573a
json_encode()
db7178ba34f9271bfca3a05c5dddf502
c9661c0852c2bd0e26ef7951b4ca9e6f
Sorted serialize()
1c4f1064ab79e4722f41ab5a8141b210
1c4f1064ab79e4722f41ab5a8141b210
Sorted json_encode()
db7178ba34f9271bfca3a05c5dddf502
db7178ba34f9271bfca3a05c5dddf502
Therefore, the two methods that I would recommend to hash an array would be:
// You will need to write your own deep_ksort(), or see
// my example below
md5( serialize(deep_ksort($array)) );
md5( json_encode(deep_ksort($array)) );
The choice of json_encode() or serialize() should be determined by testing on the type of data that you are using. By my own testing on purely textual and numerical data, if the code is not running a tight loop thousands of times then the difference is not even worth benchmarking. I personally use json_encode() for that type of data.
Here is the code used to generate the sorting test above:
$a = array();
$a['aa'] = array( 'aaa'=>'AAA', 'bbb'=>'ooo', 'qqq'=>'fff',);
$a['bb'] = array( 'aaa'=>'BBBB', 'iii'=>'dd',);
$b = array();
$b['aa'] = array( 'aaa'=>'AAA', 'qqq'=>'fff', 'bbb'=>'ooo',);
$b['bb'] = array( 'iii'=>'dd', 'aaa'=>'BBBB',);
echo " serialize()\n";
echo md5(serialize($a))."\n";
echo md5(serialize($b))."\n";
echo "\n json_encode()\n";
echo md5(json_encode($a))."\n";
echo md5(json_encode($b))."\n";
$a = deep_ksort($a);
$b = deep_ksort($b);
echo "\n Sorted serialize()\n";
echo md5(serialize($a))."\n";
echo md5(serialize($b))."\n";
echo "\n Sorted json_encode()\n";
echo md5(json_encode($a))."\n";
echo md5(json_encode($b))."\n";
My quick deep_ksort() implementation, fits this case but check it before using on your own projects:
/*
* Sort an array by keys, and additionall sort its array values by keys
*
* Does not try to sort an object, but does iterate its properties to
* sort arrays in properties
*/
function deep_ksort($input)
{
if ( !is_object($input) && !is_array($input) ) {
return $input;
}
foreach ( $input as $k=>$v ) {
if ( is_object($v) || is_array($v) ) {
$input[$k] = deep_ksort($v);
}
}
if ( is_array($input) ) {
ksort($input);
}
// Do not sort objects
return $input;
}
Answer is highly depends on data types of array values.
For big strings use:
md5(serialize($array));
For short strings and integers use:
md5(json_encode($array));
4 built-in PHP functions can transform array to string:
serialize(), json_encode(), var_export(), print_r().
Notice: json_encode() function slows down while processing associative arrays with strings as values. In this case consider to use serialize() function.
Test results for multi-dimensional array with md5-hashes (32 char) in keys and values:
Test name Repeats Result Performance
serialize 10000 0.761195 sec +0.00%
print_r 10000 1.669689 sec -119.35%
json_encode 10000 1.712214 sec -124.94%
var_export 10000 1.735023 sec -127.93%
Test result for numeric multi-dimensional array:
Test name Repeats Result Performance
json_encode 10000 1.040612 sec +0.00%
var_export 10000 1.753170 sec -68.47%
serialize 10000 1.947791 sec -87.18%
print_r 10000 9.084989 sec -773.04%
Associative array test source.
Numeric array test source.
Aside from Brock's excellent answer (+1), any decent hashing library allows you to update the hash in increments, so you should be able to update with each string sequentially, instead having to build up one giant string.
See: hash_update
md5(serialize($array));
Will work, but the hash will change depending on the order of the array (that might not matter though).
Note that serialize and json_encode act differently when it comes to numeric arrays where the keys don't start at 0, or associative arrays.
json_encode will store such arrays as an Object, so json_decode returns an Object, where unserialize will return an array with exact the same keys.
I think that this could be a good tip:
Class hasharray {
public function array_flat($in,$keys=array(),$out=array()){
foreach($in as $k => $v){
$keys[] = $k;
if(is_array($v)){
$out = $this->array_flat($v,$keys,$out);
}else{
$out[implode("/",$keys)] = $v;
}
array_pop($keys);
}
return $out;
}
public function array_hash($in){
$a = $this->array_flat($in);
ksort($a);
return md5(json_encode($a));
}
}
$h = new hasharray;
echo $h->array_hash($multi_dimensional_array);
Important note about serialize()
I don't recommend to use it as part of hashing function because it can return different result for the following examples. Check the example below:
Simple example:
$a = new \stdClass;
$a->test = 'sample';
$b = new \stdClass;
$b->one = $a;
$b->two = clone $a;
Produces
"O:8:"stdClass":2:{s:3:"one";O:8:"stdClass":1:{s:4:"test";s:6:"sample";}s:3:"two";O:8:"stdClass":1:{s:4:"test";s:6:"sample";}}"
But the following code:
<?php
$a = new \stdClass;
$a->test = 'sample';
$b = new \stdClass;
$b->one = $a;
$b->two = $a;
Output:
"O:8:"stdClass":2:{s:3:"one";O:8:"stdClass":1:{s:4:"test";s:6:"sample";}s:3:"two";r:2;}"
So instead of second object php just create link "r:2;" to the first instance. It's definitely good and correct way to serialize data, but it can lead to the issues with your hashing function.
// Convert nested arrays to a simple array
$array = array();
array_walk_recursive($input, function ($a) use (&$array) {
$array[] = $a;
});
sort($array);
$hash = md5(json_encode($array));
----
These arrays have the same hash:
$arr1 = array(0 => array(1, 2, 3), 1, 2);
$arr2 = array(0 => array(1, 3, 2), 1, 2);
I didn't see the solution so easily above so I wanted to contribute a simpler answer. For me, I was getting the same key until I used ksort (key sort):
Sorted first with Ksort, then performed sha1 on a json_encode:
ksort($array)
$hash = sha1(json_encode($array) //be mindful of UTF8
example:
$arr1 = array( 'dealer' => '100', 'direction' => 'ASC', 'dist' => '500', 'limit' => '1', 'zip' => '10601');
ksort($arr1);
$arr2 = array( 'direction' => 'ASC', 'limit' => '1', 'zip' => '10601', 'dealer' => '100', 'dist' => '5000');
ksort($arr2);
var_dump(sha1(json_encode($arr1)));
var_dump(sha1(json_encode($arr2)));
Output of altered arrays and hashes:
string(40) "502c2cbfbe62e47eb0fe96306ecb2e6c7e6d014c"
string(40) "b3319c58edadab3513832ceeb5d68bfce2fb3983"
there are several answers telling to use json_code,
but json_encode don't work fine with iso-8859-1 string, as soon as there is a special char, the string is cropped.
i would advice to use var_export :
md5(var_export($array, true))
not as slow as serialize, not as bugged as json_encode
Currently the most up-voted answer md5(serialize($array)); doesn't work well with objects.
Consider code:
$a = array(new \stdClass());
$b = array(new \stdClass());
Even though arrays are different (they contain different objects), they have same hash when using md5(serialize($array));. So your hash is useless!
To avoid that problem, you can replace objects with result of spl_object_hash() before serializing. You also should do it recursively if your array has multiple levels.
Code below also sorts arrays by keys, as dotancohen have suggested.
function replaceObjectsWithHashes(array $array)
{
foreach ($array as &$value) {
if (is_array($value)) {
$value = $this->replaceObjectsInArrayWithHashes($value);
} elseif (is_object($value)) {
$value = spl_object_hash($value);
}
}
ksort($array);
return $array;
}
Now you can use md5(serialize(replaceObjectsWithHashes($array))).
(Note that the array in PHP is value type. So replaceObjectsWithHashes function DO NOT change original array.)
in some case maybe it's better to use http_build_query to convert array to string :
md5( http_build_query( $array ) );