Efficiently transforming Arrays (PHP) - php

Question

Edit: Thanks to #Felix Kling and #mario for pointing me towards named capture groups and PREG_SET_ORDER, I totally learned something today.
I'm curious about a better algorithm per se, though. So please just pretend that there's no preg_match() involved.
Edit 2: Abstracted question
While answering another question here, I stumbled upon the fact that my code for turning
this:
Array
(
[0] => Array (
[0] => 1
[1] => 3
)
[1] => Array (
[0] => Description text
[1] => Different Description text
)
[2] => Array (
[0] => 123.456.12
[1] => 234.567.89
)
[3] => Array (
[0] => 10.00
[1] => 10.00
)
[4] => Array (
[0] => 10.00
[1] => 30.00
)
)
into that:
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[qty] => 1
[description] => "Description text"
[sku] => 123.456.12
[price] => 10.00
[total] => 10.00
)
…
)
is fugly:
$field_names = array('qty', 'description', 'sku', 'price', 'total');
$result_arr = array();
$num_iter = count(matches[0]);
for ($i = 0; $i < $num_iter; $i++) {
foreach ($field_names as $index => $field_name) {
$result_arr[$i][$field_name] = array_shift($input_arr[$index]);
}
}
Any suggestions for improvement?

Answer 1

There is one simpler way to produce the desired output.
while (count($input_arr[0])) {
$values = array_map("array_shift", & $input_arr);
$result_arr[] = array_combine($field_names, $values);
}
This won't work past PHP 5.3, as it requires forcibly passing a parameter by reference. (Avoiding any dumbing-down-the-language remarks here). But you can of course chop off the entries with a more elaborate manual loop at any time.
The real simplification for such cases is however array_combine to turn a list into an associative array.