Introduction
Sometimes you have a need to compare arrays in PHP, that is, getting everything in not in common between two arrays. array_diff_* kind of does the job, but if you take a look below, you can find out why it's a more robust solution.
Get 'er Done
Pass in two args, $weighted which takes precedence, and $comparable which is what you are comparing against.
function array_compare($weighted, $comparable){
return array_merge(
array_diff_assoc($weighted, $comparable),
array_diff_assoc($comparable, $weighted)
);
}
Example
Create our test arrays:
$weighted = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'x', 'y', 'z'];
$comparable = ['a', 'c', 'e', 'g', 'y'];
Compare them using array_compare:
var_dump(array_compare($weighted, $comparable));
array(7) {
[0]=>
string(1) "b"
[1]=>
string(1) "c"
[2]=>
string(1) "x"
[3]=>
string(1) "z"
[4]=>
string(1) "c"
[5]=>
string(1) "e"
[6]=>
string(1) "g"
}
