PHP: Check for duplicate values in a multidimensional array

Question

I have this issue with multidimensional arrays.

Given the following multidimensional array:

Array(
[0] => Array("a", "b", "c")
[1] => Array("x", "y", "z")
[2] => Array("a", "b", "c")
[3] => Array("a", "b", "c")
[4] => Array("a", "x", "z")
)

I want to check its values and find duplicates (i.e. keys 0, 2 and 3) leaving just one key - value pair deleting the others, resulting in somthing like this:

Array(
    [0] => Array("a", "b", "c")
    [1] => Array("x", "y", "z")
    [2] => Array("a", "x", "z")
    )

How can I do that??

Answer 1

This will remove duplicate items from your array using array_unique():

$new_arr = array_unique($arr, SORT_REGULAR);

Answer 2

You can simply do it using in_array()

$data = Array(
    0 => Array("a", "b", "c"),
    1 => Array("x", "y", "z"),
    2 => Array("a", "b", "c"),
    3 => Array("a", "b", "c"),
    4 => Array("a", "x", "z"),
);

$final = array();
foreach ($data as $array) {
    if(!in_array($array, $final)){
        $final[] = $array;
    }
}

which will get you something like

array(3) {
  [0] => array(3) {
    [0] => string(1) "a"
    [1] => string(1) "b"
    [2] => string(1) "c"
  }
  [1] => array(3) {
    [0] => string(1) "x"
    [1] => string(1) "y"
    [2] => string(1) "z"
  }
  [2] => array(3) {
    [0] => string(1) "a"
    [1] => string(1) "x"
    [2] => string(1) "z"
  }
}