Book Image

PHP 7 Data Structures and Algorithms

By : Mizanur Rahman
5 (1)
Book Image

PHP 7 Data Structures and Algorithms

5 (1)
By: Mizanur Rahman

Overview of this book

PHP has always been the the go-to language for web based application development, but there are materials and resources you can refer to to see how it works. Data structures and algorithms help you to code and execute them effectively, cutting down on processing time significantly. If you want to explore data structures and algorithms in a practical way with real-life projects, then this book is for you. The book begins by introducing you to data structures and algorithms and how to solve a problem from beginning to end using them. Once you are well aware of the basics, it covers the core aspects like arrays, listed lists, stacks and queues. It will take you through several methods of finding efficient algorithms and show you which ones you should implement in each scenario. In addition to this, you will explore the possibilities of functional data structures using PHP and go through advanced algorithms and graphs as well as dynamic programming. By the end, you will be confident enough to tackle both basic and advanced data structures, understand how they work, and know when to use them in your day-to-day work
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Understanding PHP arrays in a better way

PHP arrays are so dynamic and flexible that we have to think about whether it is a regular array, an associative array, or a multidimensional array, as in some other languages. We do not need to define the size and data type of the array we are going to use. How can PHP do that, while other languages like C and Java cannot do the same? The answer is very simple: the array concept in PHP is not actually the real array, it is actually a HashMap. In other words, a PHP array is not the plain and simple array concept we have from other languages. A simple array will look like this:

But, we can definitely do that with PHP. Let us check with an example:

$array = [1,2,3,4,5];

This line shows how a typical array should look. Similar types of data have a sequential index (starting from 0 to 4) to access the values. So who says a PHP array is not...