How does PHP 'foreach' actually work?

Question

Let me prefix this by saying that I know what foreach is, does and how to use it. This question concerns how it works under the bonnet, and I don't want any answers along the lines of "this is how you loop an array with foreach".

---

For a long time I assumed that foreach worked with the array itself. Then I found many references to the fact that it works with a copy of the array, and I have since assumed this to be the end of the story. But I recently got into a discussion on the matter, and after a little experimentation found that this was not in fact 100% true.

Let me show what I mean. For the following test cases, we will be working with the following array:

$array = array(1, 2, 3, 4, 5);

Test case 1:

foreach ($array as $item) {
  echo "$item\n";
  $array[] = $item;
}
print_r($array);

/* Output in loop:    1 2 3 4 5
   $array after loop: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 */

This clearly shows that we are not working directly with the source array - otherwise the loop would continue forever, since we are constantly pushing items onto the array during the loop. But just to be sure this is the case:

Test case 2:

foreach ($array as $key => $item) {
  $array[$key + 1] = $item + 2;
  echo "$item\n";
}

print_r($array);

/* Output in loop:    1 2 3 4 5
   $array after loop: 1 3 4 5 6 7 */

This backs up our initial conclusion, we are working with a copy of the source array during the loop, otherwise we would see the modified values during the loop. But...

If we look in the manual, we find this statement:

When foreach first starts executing, the internal array pointer is automatically reset to the first element of the array.

Right... this seems to suggest that foreach relies on the array pointer of the source array. But we've just proved that we're not working with the source array, right? Well, not entirely.

Test case 3:

// Move the array pointer on one to make sure it doesn't affect the loop
var_dump(each($array));

foreach ($array as $item) {
  echo "$item\n";
}

var_dump(each($array));

/* Output
  array(4) {
    [1]=>
    int(1)
    ["value"]=>
    int(1)
    [0]=>
    int(0)
    ["key"]=>
    int(0)
  }
  1
  2
  3
  4
  5
  bool(false)
*/

So, despite the fact that we are not working directly with the source array, we are working directly with the source array pointer - the fact that the pointer is at the end of the array at the end of the loop shows this. Except this can't be true - if it was, then test case 1 would loop forever.

The PHP manual also states:

As foreach relies on the internal array pointer changing it within the loop may lead to unexpected behavior.

Well, let's find out what that "unexpected behavior" is (technically, any behavior is unexpected since I no longer know what to expect).

Test case 4:

foreach ($array as $key => $item) {
  echo "$item\n";
  each($array);
}

/* Output: 1 2 3 4 5 */

Test case 5:

foreach ($array as $key => $item) {
  echo "$item\n";
  reset($array);
}

/* Output: 1 2 3 4 5 */

...nothing that unexpected there, in fact it seems to support the "copy of source" theory.

---

The Question

What is going on here? My C-fu is not good enough for me to able to extract a proper conclusion simply by looking at the PHP source code, I would appreciate it if someone could translate it into English for me.

It seems to me that foreach works with a copy of the array, but sets the array pointer of the source array to the end of the array after the loop.

• Is this correct and the whole story?
• If not, what is it really doing?
• Is there any situation where using functions that adjust the array pointer (each(), reset() et al.) during a foreach could affect the outcome of the loop?

Answer 1

foreach supports iteration over three different kinds of values:

• Arrays
• Normal objects
• Traversable objects

In the following, I will try to explain precisely how iteration works in different cases. By far the simplest case is Traversable objects, as for these foreach is essentially only syntax sugar for code along these lines:

foreach ($it as $k => $v) { /* ... */ }

/* translates to: */

if ($it instanceof IteratorAggregate) {
    $it = $it->getIterator();
}
for ($it->rewind(); $it->valid(); $it->next()) {
    $v = $it->current();
    $k = $it->key();
    /* ... */
}

For internal classes, actual method calls are avoided by using an internal API that essentially just mirrors the Iterator interface on the C level.

Iteration of arrays and plain objects is significantly more complicated. First of all, it should be noted that in PHP "arrays" are really ordered dictionaries and they will be traversed according to this order (which matches the insertion order as long as you didn't use something like sort). This is opposed to iterating by the natural order of the keys (how lists in other languages often work) or having no defined order at all (how dictionaries in other languages often work).

The same also applies to objects, as the object properties can be seen as another (ordered) dictionary mapping property names to their values, plus some visibility handling. In the majority of cases, the object properties are not actually stored in this rather inefficient way. However, if you start iterating over an object, the packed representation that is normally used will be converted to a real dictionary. At that point, iteration of plain objects becomes very similar to iteration of arrays (which is why I'm not discussing plain-object iteration much in here).

So far, so good. Iterating over a dictionary can't be too hard, right? The problems begin when you realize that an array/object can change during iteration. There are multiple ways this can happen:

• If you iterate by reference using foreach ($arr as &$v) then $arr is turned into a reference and you can change it during iteration.
• In PHP 5 the same applies even if you iterate by value, but the array was a reference beforehand: $ref =& $arr; foreach ($ref as $v)
• Objects have by-handle passing semantics, which for most practical purposes means that they behave like references. So objects can always be changed during iteration.

The problem with allowing modifications during iteration is the case where the element you are currently on is removed. Say you use a pointer to keep track of which array element you are currently at. If this element is now freed, you are left with a dangling pointer (usually resulting in a segfault).

There are different ways of solving this issue. PHP 5 and PHP 7 differ significantly in this regard and I'll describe both behaviors in the following. The summary is that PHP 5's approach was rather dumb and lead to all kinds of weird edge-case issues, while PHP 7's more involved approach results in more predictable and consistent behavior.

As a last preliminary, it should be noted that PHP uses reference counting and copy-on-write to manage memory. This means that if you "copy" a value, you actually just reuse the old value and increment its reference count (refcount). Only once you perform some kind of modification a real copy (called a "duplication") will be done. See You're being lied to for a more extensive introduction on this topic.

PHP 5

Internal array pointer and HashPointer

Arrays in PHP 5 have one dedicated "internal array pointer" (IAP), which properly supports modifications: Whenever an element is removed, there will be a check whether the IAP points to this element. If it does, it is advanced to the next element instead.

While foreach does make use of the IAP, there is an additional complication: There is only one IAP, but one array can be part of multiple foreach loops:

// Using by-ref iteration here to make sure that it's really
// the same array in both loops and not a copy
foreach ($arr as &$v1) {
    foreach ($arr as &$v) {
        // ...
    }
}

To support two simultaneous loops with only one internal array pointer, foreach performs the following shenanigans: Before the loop body is executed, foreach will back up a pointer to the current element and its hash into a per-foreach HashPointer. After the loop body runs, the IAP will be set back to this element if it still exists. If however the element has been removed, we'll just use wherever the IAP is currently at. This scheme mostly-kinda-sort of works, but there's a lot of weird behavior you can get out of it, some of which I'll demonstrate below.

Array duplication

The IAP is a visible feature of an array (exposed through the current family of functions), as such changes to the IAP count as modifications under copy-on-write semantics. This, unfortunately, means that foreach is in many cases forced to duplicate the array it is iterating over. The precise conditions are:

1. The array is not a reference (is_ref=0). If it's a reference, then changes to it are supposed to propagate, so it should not be duplicated.
2. The array has refcount>1. If refcount is 1, then the array is not shared and we're free to modify it directly.

If the array is not duplicated (is_ref=0, refcount=1), then only its refcount will be incremented (*). Additionally, if foreach by reference is used, then the (potentially duplicated) array will be turned into a reference.

Consider this code as an example where duplication occurs:

function iterate($arr) {
    foreach ($arr as $v) {}
}

$outerArr = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4];
iterate($outerArr);

Here, $arr will be duplicated to prevent IAP changes on $arr from leaking to $outerArr. In terms of the conditions above, the array is not a reference (is_ref=0) and is used in two places (refcount=2). This requirement is unfortunate and an artifact of the suboptimal implementation (there is no concern of modification during iteration here, so we don't really need to use the IAP in the first place).

(*) Incrementing the refcount here sounds innocuous, but violates copy-on-write (COW) semantics: This means that we are going to modify the IAP of a refcount=2 array, while COW dictates that modifications can only be performed on refcount=1 values. This violation results in user-visible behavior change (while a COW is normally transparent) because the IAP change on the iterated array will be observable -- but only until the first non-IAP modification on the array. Instead, the three "valid" options would have been a) to always duplicate, b) do not increment the refcount and thus allowing the iterated array to be arbitrarily modified in the loop or c) don't use the IAP at all (the PHP 7 solution).

Position advancement order

There is one last implementation detail that you have to be aware of to properly understand the code samples below. The "normal" way of looping through some data structure would look something like this in pseudocode:

reset(arr);
while (get_current_data(arr, &data) == SUCCESS) {
    code();
    move_forward(arr);
}

However foreach, being a rather special snowflake, chooses to do things slightly differently:

reset(arr);
while (get_current_data(arr, &data) == SUCCESS) {
    move_forward(arr);
    code();
}

Namely, the array pointer is already moved forward before the loop body runs. This means that while the loop body is working on element $i, the IAP is already at element $i+1. This is the reason why code samples showing modification during iteration will always unset the next element, rather than the current one.

Examples: Your test cases

The three aspects described above should provide you with a mostly complete impression of the idiosyncrasies of the foreach implementation and we can move on to discuss some examples.

The behavior of your test cases is simple to explain at this point:

• In test cases 1 and 2 $array starts off with refcount=1, so it will not be duplicated by foreach: Only the refcount is incremented. When the loop body subsequently modifies the array (which has refcount=2 at that point), the duplication will occur at that point. Foreach will continue working on an unmodified copy of $array.

• In test case 3, once again the array is not duplicated, thus foreach will be modifying the IAP of the $array variable. At the end of the iteration, the IAP is NULL (meaning iteration has done), which each indicates by returning false.

• In test cases 4 and 5 both each and reset are by-reference functions. The $array has a refcount=2 when it is passed to them, so it has to be duplicated. As such foreach will be working on a separate array again.

Examples: Effects of current in foreach

A good way to show the various duplication behaviors is to observe the behavior of the current() function inside a foreach loop. Consider this example:

foreach ($array as $val) {
    var_dump(current($array));
}
/* Output: 2 2 2 2 2 */

Here you should know that current() is a by-ref function (actually: prefer-ref), even though it does not modify the array. It has to be in order to play nice with all the other functions like next which are all by-ref. By-reference passing implies that the array has to be separated and thus $array and the foreach-array will be different. The reason you get 2 instead of 1 is also mentioned above: foreach advances the array pointer before running the user code, not after. So even though the code is at the first element, foreach already advanced the pointer to the second.

Now lets try a small modification:

$ref = &$array;
foreach ($array as $val) {
    var_dump(current($array));
}
/* Output: 2 3 4 5 false */

Here we have the is_ref=1 case, so the array is not copied (just like above). But now that it is a reference, the array no longer has to be duplicated when passing to the by-ref current() function. Thus current() and foreach work on the same array. You still see the off-by-one behavior though, due to the way foreach advances the pointer.

You get the same behavior when doing by-ref iteration:

foreach ($array as &$val) {
    var_dump(current($array));
}
/* Output: 2 3 4 5 false */

Here the important part is that foreach will make $array an is_ref=1 when it is iterated by reference, so basically you have the same situation as above.

Another small variation, this time we'll assign the array to another variable:

$foo = $array;
foreach ($array as $val) {
    var_dump(current($array));
}
/* Output: 1 1 1 1 1 */

Here the refcount of the $array is 2 when the loop is started, so for once we actually have to do the duplication upfront. Thus $array and the array used by foreach will be completely separate from the outset. That's why you get the position of the IAP wherever it was before the loop (in this case it was at the first position).

Examples: Modification during iteration

Trying to account for modifications during iteration is where all our foreach troubles originated, so it serves to consider some examples for this case.

Consider these nested loops over the same array (where by-ref iteration is used to make sure it really is the same one):

foreach ($array as &$v1) {
    foreach ($array as &$v2) {
        if ($v1 == 1 && $v2 == 1) {
            unset($array[1]);
        }
        echo "($v1, $v2)\n";
    }
}

// Output: (1, 1) (1, 3) (1, 4) (1, 5)

The expected part here is that (1, 2) is missing from the output because element 1 was removed. What's probably unexpected is that the outer loop stops after the first element. Why is that?

The reason behind this is the nested-loop hack described above: Before the loop body runs, the current IAP position and hash is backed up into a HashPointer. After the loop body it will be restored, but only if the element still exists, otherwise the current IAP position (whatever it may be) is used instead. In the example above this is exactly the case: The current element of the outer loop has been removed, so it will use the IAP, which has already been marked as finished by the inner loop!

Another consequence of the HashPointer backup+restore mechanism is that changes to the IAP through reset() etc. usually do not impact foreach. For example, the following code executes as if the reset() were not present at all:

$array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
foreach ($array as &$value) {
    var_dump($value);
    reset($array);
}
// output: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The reason is that, while reset() temporarily modifies the IAP, it will be restored to the current foreach element after the loop body. To force reset() to make an effect on the loop, you have to additionally remove the current element, so that the backup/restore mechanism fails:

$array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
$ref =& $array;
foreach ($array as $value) {
    var_dump($value);
    unset($array[1]);
    reset($array);
}
// output: 1, 1, 3, 4, 5

But, those examples are still sane. The real fun starts if you remember that the HashPointer restore uses a pointer to the element and its hash to determine whether it still exists. But: Hashes have collisions, and pointers can be reused! This means that, with a careful choice of array keys, we can make foreach believe that an element that has been removed still exists, so it will jump directly to it. An example:

$array = ['EzEz' => 1, 'EzFY' => 2, 'FYEz' => 3];
$ref =& $array;
foreach ($array as $value) {
    unset($array['EzFY']);
    $array['FYFY'] = 4;
    reset($array);
    var_dump($value);
}
// output: 1, 4

Here we should normally expect the output 1, 1, 3, 4 according to the previous rules. How what happens is that 'FYFY' has the same hash as the removed element 'EzFY', and the allocator happens to reuse the same memory location to store the element. So foreach ends up directly jumping to the newly inserted element, thus short-cutting the loop.

Substituting the iterated entity during the loop

One last odd case that I'd like to mention, it is that PHP allows you to substitute the iterated entity during the loop. So you can start iterating on one array and then replace it with another array halfway through. Or start iterating on an array and then replace it with an object:

$arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
$obj = (object) [6, 7, 8, 9, 10];

$ref =& $arr;
foreach ($ref as $val) {
    echo "$val\n";
    if ($val == 3) {
        $ref = $obj;
    }
}
/* Output: 1 2 3 6 7 8 9 10 */

As you can see in this case PHP will just start iterating the other entity from the start once the substitution has happened.

PHP 7

Hashtable iterators

If you still remember, the main problem with array iteration was how to handle removal of elements mid-iteration. PHP 5 used a single internal array pointer (IAP) for this purpose, which was somewhat suboptimal, as one array pointer had to be stretched to support multiple simultaneous foreach loops and interaction with reset() etc. on top of that.

PHP 7 uses a different approach, namely, it supports creating an arbitrary amount of external, safe hashtable iterators. These iterators have to be registered in the array, from which point on they have the same semantics as the IAP: If an array element is removed, all hashtable iterators pointing to that element will be advanced to the next element.

This means that foreach will no longer use the IAP at all. The foreach loop will be absolutely no effect on the results of current() etc. and its own behavior will never be influenced by functions like reset() etc.

Array duplication

Another important change between PHP 5 and PHP 7 relates to array duplication. Now that the IAP is no longer used, by-value array iteration will only do a refcount increment (instead of duplication the array) in all cases. If the array is modified during the foreach loop, at that point a duplication will occur (according to copy-on-write) and foreach will keep working on the old array.

In most cases, this change is transparent and has no other effect than better performance. However, there is one occasion where it results in different behavior, namely the case where the array was a reference beforehand:

$array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
$ref = &$array;
foreach ($array as $val) {
    var_dump($val);
    $array[2] = 0;
}
/* Old output: 1, 2, 0, 4, 5 */
/* New output: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 */

Previously by-value iteration of reference-arrays was special cases. In this case, no duplication occurred, so all modifications of the array during iteration would be reflected by the loop. In PHP 7 this special case is gone: A by-value iteration of an array will always keep working on the original elements, disregarding any modifications during the loop.

This, of course, does not apply to by-reference iteration. If you iterate by-reference all modifications will be reflected by the loop. Interestingly, the same is true for by-value iteration of plain objects:

$obj = new stdClass;
$obj->foo = 1;
$obj->bar = 2;
foreach ($obj as $val) {
    var_dump($val);
    $obj->bar = 42;
}
/* Old and new output: 1, 42 */

This reflects the by-handle semantics of objects (i.e. they behave reference-like even in by-value contexts).

Examples

Let's consider a few examples, starting with your test cases:

• Test cases 1 and 2 retain the same output: By-value array iteration always keep working on the original elements. (In this case, even refcounting and duplication behavior is exactly the same between PHP 5 and PHP 7).

• Test case 3 changes: Foreach no longer uses the IAP, so each() is not affected by the loop. It will have the same output before and after.

• Test cases 4 and 5 stay the same: each() and reset() will duplicate the array before changing the IAP, while foreach still uses the original array. (Not that the IAP change would have mattered, even if the array was shared.)

The second set of examples was related to the behavior of current() under different reference/refcounting configurations. This no longer makes sense, as current() is completely unaffected by the loop, so its return value always stays the same.

However, we get some interesting changes when considering modifications during iteration. I hope you will find the new behavior saner. The first example:

$array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
foreach ($array as &$v1) {
    foreach ($array as &$v2) {
        if ($v1 == 1 && $v2 == 1) {
            unset($array[1]);
        }
        echo "($v1, $v2)\n";
    }
}

// Old output: (1, 1) (1, 3) (1, 4) (1, 5)
// New output: (1, 1) (1, 3) (1, 4) (1, 5)
//             (3, 1) (3, 3) (3, 4) (3, 5)
//             (4, 1) (4, 3) (4, 4) (4, 5)
//             (5, 1) (5, 3) (5, 4) (5, 5) 

As you can see, the outer loop no longer aborts after the first iteration. The reason is that both loops now have entirely separate hashtable iterators, and there is no longer any cross-contamination of both loops through a shared IAP.

Another weird edge case that is fixed now, is the odd effect you get when you remove and add elements that happen to have the same hash:

$array = ['EzEz' => 1, 'EzFY' => 2, 'FYEz' => 3];
foreach ($array as &$value) {
    unset($array['EzFY']);
    $array['FYFY'] = 4;
    var_dump($value);
}
// Old output: 1, 4
// New output: 1, 3, 4

Previously the HashPointer restore mechanism jumped right to the new element because it "looked" like it's the same as the removed element (due to colliding hash and pointer). As we no longer rely on the element hash for anything, this is no longer an issue.