How can I implode an array while skipping empty array items?

php implode
Tom Auger picture Tom Auger · May 13, 2011 · Viewed 45.8k times · Source

Perl's join() ignores (skips) empty array values; PHP's implode() does not appear to.

Suppose I have an array:

$array = array('one', '', '', 'four', '', 'six');
implode('-', $array);

yields:

one---four--six

instead of (IMHO the preferable):

one-four-six

Any other built-ins with the behaviour I'm looking for? Or is it going to be a custom jobbie?

Answer

Felix Kling picture Felix Kling · May 13, 2011

You can use array_filter():

If no callback is supplied, all entries of input equal to FALSE (see converting to boolean) will be removed. 

implode('-', array_filter($array));

Obviously this will not work if you have 0 (or any other value that evaluates to false) in your array and you want to keep it. But then you can provide your own callback function.

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