Count elements in each sub array in php

Question

An example from php.net provides the following

<?php
$food = array('fruits' => array('orange', 'banana', 'apple'),
          'veggie' => array('carrot', 'collard', 'pea'));

// recursive count
echo count($food, COUNT_RECURSIVE); // output 8

// normal count
echo count($food); // output 2
?>

How can I get the number of fruits and the number veggies independently from the $food array (output 3)?

Answer 1

You can do this:

echo count($food['fruits']);
echo count($food['veggie']);

If you want a more general solution, you can use a foreach loop:

foreach ($food as $type => $list) {
    echo $type." has ".count($list). " elements\n";
}

Answer 2

Could you be a little lazy, rather than a foreach with a running count twice and take away the parents.

// recursive count
$all_nodes = count($food, COUNT_RECURSIVE); // output 8

// normal count
$parent_nodes count($food); // output 2

echo $all_nodes - $parent_nodes; // output 6