I recently was asked to make a search that filtered on 5 different variables. Now that isn't that hard. in MySQL it would be something like
SELECT * FROM TABLE_NAME_HERE WHERE This = '$That' "
." and This2 = '$That2'"
." and This3 = '$That3"
."";
You get the idea.
Problem was not allways would all five variables be used.(is that proper english?) So I found myself researching multi-dimensional arrays and using that instead.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.array.php Now the cool thing about using arrays is I found it to be pretty close to using a database. I have used arrays befor, but never with more than 3 demesions. Using PHP What I did was search the database on the only variable that would allways be used. Then I filtered the array from there. I removed the unwated array elements using unset ()
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.unset.php Then re-ordered the array to be able to get its results using array_values()
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.array-values.php However, after further reading I find array_values() dose not overwrite the old array, instead it creates a new one. Now with a huge array this could be a memory issue could it not?
I am looking for any thoughtful feed back on this as to what a efficent work around might be.