Is there a way to detect circular arrays in pure PHP?

Question

I'm trying to implement my own serialization / var_dump style function in PHP. It seems impossible if there is the possibility of circular arrays (which there is).

In recent PHP versions, var_dump seems to detect circular arrays:

php > $a = array();
php > $a[] = &$a;
php > var_dump($a);
array(1) {
  [0]=>
  &array(1) {
    [0]=>
    *RECURSION*
  }
}

How would I implement my own serialization type of method in PHP that can detect similarly? I can't just keep track of which arrays I've visited, because strict comparison of arrays in PHP returns true for different arrays that contain the same elements and comparing circular arrays causes a Fatal Error, anyways.

php > $b = array(1,2);
php > $c = array(1,2);
php > var_dump($b === $c);
bool(true)
php > $a = array();
php > $a[] = &$a;
php > var_dump($a === $a);
PHP Fatal error:  Nesting level too deep - recursive dependency? in php shell code on line 1

I've looked for a way to find a unique id (pointer) for an array, but I can't find one. spl_object_hash only works on objects, not arrays. If I cast multiple different arrays to objects they all get the same spl_object_hash value (why?).

EDIT:

Calling print_r, var_dump, or serialize on each array and then using some mechanism to detect the presence of recursion as detected by those methods is an algorithmic complexity nightmare and will basically render any use too slow to be practical on large nested arrays.

ACCEPTED ANSWER:

I accepted the answer below that was the first to suggest temporarily altering the an array to see if it is indeed the same as another array. That answers the "how do I compare two arrays for identity?" from which recursion detection is trivial.

Answer 1

The isRecursiveArray(array) method below detects circular/recursive arrays. It keeps track of which arrays have been visited by temporarily adding an element containing a known object reference to the end of the array.

If you want help writing the serialization method, please update your topic question and provide a sample serialization format in your question.

function removeLastElementIfSame(array & $array, $reference) {
    if(end($array) === $reference) {
        unset($array[key($array)]);
    }
}

function isRecursiveArrayIteration(array & $array, $reference) {
    $last_element   = end($array);
    if($reference === $last_element) {
        return true;
    }
    $array[]    = $reference;

    foreach($array as &$element) {
        if(is_array($element)) {
            if(isRecursiveArrayIteration($element, $reference)) {
                removeLastElementIfSame($array, $reference);
                return true;
            }
        }
    }

    removeLastElementIfSame($array, $reference);

    return false;
}

function isRecursiveArray(array $array) {
    $some_reference = new stdclass();
    return isRecursiveArrayIteration($array, $some_reference);
}



$array      = array('a','b','c');
var_dump(isRecursiveArray($array));
print_r($array);



$array      = array('a','b','c');
$array[]    = $array;
var_dump(isRecursiveArray($array));
print_r($array);



$array      = array('a','b','c');
$array[]    = &$array;
var_dump(isRecursiveArray($array));
print_r($array);



$array      = array('a','b','c');
$array[]    = &$array;
$array      = array($array);
var_dump(isRecursiveArray($array));
print_r($array);