Count level 3 of an array - php

Question

Is it possible without iterating the array?
$arr = array(
'section1' => array(
5 => array(1, 2, 3),
25 => array(4, 5),
34 => array(10, 12),
),
'section2' => array(
45 => array(1, 42, 3),
64 => array(10, 2, 5, 95),
),
'section3' => array(
5 => array(1, 2, 3, 5, 2),
25 => array(4, 5, 14),
34 => array(17),
),
);
$count = 0;
foreach($arr as $section)
foreach($section as $subsection)
foreach($subsection as $entries)
$count++;
echo $count; // 23
It works but I dont want to iterate trough the entire array just to count some elements...

Answer 1

You can use count().
If you need a total of all elements from all levels:
count($arr, COUNT_RECURSIVE);
If you only need to count the ones on the third level:
foreach($arr as $section)
foreach($section as $subsection)
$count += count($subsection);

Answer 2

Anything's possible right? ;-)
I'd see two ways you could do this without iterating and one would be to evaluate the print_r($main_array) value perhaps counting the "(" to reach the desired depth.
--
The other way would be store the data as JSON, so you can "walk" the tree, plus it's native in javascript so very efficient with dot notation.
"somefield":["anotherfield":["yetanother":value], "woohoo":["yahoo":value]]] (excuse me if not well-formed just on the fly)
Then you parse JSON and reference like: myval = somefield.anotherfield.yetanother; // myval = value

Answer 3

Here's my aproach to this conundrum!
<?php
$arr = array(
'section1' => array(
5 => array(1, 2, 3),
25 => array(4, 5),
34 => array(10, 12),
),
'section2' => array(
45 => array(1, 42, 3),
64 => array(10, 2, 5, 95),
),
'section3' => array(
5 => array(1, 2, 3, 5, 2),
25 => array(4, 5, 14),
34 => array(17),
),
);
function count_all($array)
{
$count = 0;
foreach ($array as $k => $v)
{
if (is_array($v))
{
$count += count_all($v);
}
else {
$count++;
}
}
return $count;
}
echo count_all($arr);