PHP Arrays – Get the differences between two arrays with additional index checks

In this post we will be creating a PHP script that will return the differences between two arrays, here we will be checking for a difference in value and index. And so the script will check if the value and placement of the item via its index are the same.

Arrays in PHP are a means of storing multiple items in to a single a variable. To do this we will be using the ‘array_diff_assoc()’ function which computes the difference of arrays along with an additional check on the index.

See below our two arrays for this example.

$array1 = array("James", "Rahul", "Amy", "Leah");
$array2 = array("James", "Tobi", "Rahul", "Leah");

Using the snippet of code below we utilize the ‘array_diff_asoc()’ function to get the difference between ‘array1’ and ‘array2’.

<?php
$array1 = array("James", "Rahul", "Amy", "Leah");
$array2 = array("James", "Tobi", "Rahul", "Leah");

$difference = array_diff_assoc($array1, $array2);

print_r($difference);
?>

The above would return the following as output. ‘Rahul’ is also returned as the index of this item differs in ‘array2’.

Array ( [1] => Rahul [2] => Amy )