It can be very useful to pass the third (optional) parameter by reference while modifying it permanently in callback function. This will cause passing modified parameter to next iteration of array_walk(). The exaple below enumerates items in the array:
<?php
function enumerate( &$item1, $key, &$startNum ) {
$item1 = $startNum++ ." $item1";
}
$num = 1;
$fruits = array( "lemon", "orange", "banana", "apple");
array_walk($fruits, 'enumerate', $num );
print_r( $fruits );
echo '$num is: '. $num ."\n";
?>
This outputs:
Array
(
[0] => 1 lemon
[1] => 2 orange
[2] => 3 banana
[3] => 4 apple
)
$num is: 1
Notice at the last line of output that outside of array_walk() the $num parameter has initial value of 1. This is because array_walk() does not take the third parameter by reference.. so what if we pass the reference as the optional parameter..
<?php
$num = 1;
$fruits = array( "lemon", "orange", "banana", "apple");
array_walk($fruits, 'enumerate', &$num ); print_r( $fruits );
echo '$num is: '. $num ."\n";
echo "we've got ". ($num - 1) ." fruits in the basket!";
?>
This outputs:
Array
(
[0] => 1 lemon
[1] => 2 orange
[2] => 3 banana
[3] => 4 apple
)
$num is: 5
we've got 4 fruits in the basket!
Now $num has changed so we are able to count the items (without calling count() unnecessarily).
As a conclusion, using references with array_walk() can be powerful toy but this should be done carefully since modifying third parameter outside the array_walk() is not always what we want.
