PHP: append to value if the key already exist, if not add the key

Question

I am looking for a succinct way of doing this in PHP:

given an array, if I add one key=>value pair to it, the routine should check whether the key already exist.

If it doesn't exist, add to the array with the key=>value pair.

If it does, then the value should be append to the value of the array. So, for example, if the initial array is this

arr['a']='2e'

When I add a 'a'=>'45' pair to the array, then the routine will return me

arr['a']=array('2e', '45')

When I add another 'a=>gt' pair to it, then the routine will return me

arr['a']=array('2e', '45','gt')

Is there a succinct way of doing this? Of course I can write it myself but I believe my solution is very ugly.

Answer 1

You could solve the problem, by using an array for the first element ("2e") aswell:

$arr = array();

$arr['a'][] = '2e';
$arr['a'][] = '45';
$arr['a'][] = 'gt';

print_r($arr);