Refactor (transpose) array to unique keys [duplicate] - php

Question

This question already has answers here:
Transposing multidimensional arrays in PHP
(12 answers)
Closed 8 years ago.
I'm transposing some db results for statistic generation.
Original array:
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[a] => apple
[b] => beer
[c] => chocolate
)
[1] => Array
(
[a] => aardvark
[b] => bear
[c] => chupacabra
)
)
Desired result:
Array
(
[a] => Array
(
[0] => apple
[1] => aardvark
)
[b] => Array
(
[0] => beer
[1] => bear
)
[c] => Array
(
[0] => chocolate
[1] => chupacabra
)
)
Sample code:
$stats[] = array(
'a' => 'apple',
'b' => 'beer',
'c' => 'chocolate'
);
$stats[] = array(
'a' => 'aardvark',
'b' => 'bear',
'c' => 'chupacabra'
);
foreach (array_keys($stats[0]) as $key){
$data[$key] = array_column($stats, $key);
}
The above code is working fine using array_keys and array_column (php 5.5).
Is there a more elegant way or php function to achieve the same result?
What is the common name for this kind of re-factoring?
EDIT:
As per comments below the correct term for this is "transposing"

Answer 1

I had thought there was an array_* function for that sort of thing, but I couldn't remember so I went to the PHP documentation Turns out that array_merge_recursive does just what you want.
array_merge_recursive($array1, $array2)
You have your arrays to combine in a single array, so you'll have to populate the function's arguments with the contents of the array.
call_user_func_array("array_merge_recursive", $stats)
That one line should do what you are looking for.