php insert value into array of arrays using foreach

Question

I have a pretty basic question but I am stuck. I am pretty new to php and I have an array like this:

$array = array(
    'one' => 1,
    'two' => array('key1' => 'val1','key2' => 'val2'),
    'three' => array('key1' => 'val1','key2' => 'val2'),
    'four' => array('key1' => 'val1','key2' => 'val2')
);

and for each of the arrays in the array (that is, 'two, 'three', and 'four'), I want to insert 'key3' => 'val3' into those arrays.

I tried this:

foreach($array as $item) {
    if (gettype($item) == "array") {
        $item['key3'] = 'val3';
    }
}

But it doesn't work, and I'm not sure why. Using various print_r's all over the place, it seems to insert 'key3' => 'val3' into $item if I print it out in the loop, but the original array seems unchanged. I also tried a regular for loop but that didn't work either.

Answer 1

foreach works with a copy of $item, so you cannot modify your original array inside the foreach. One way to work around this is to use the & operator.

foreach($array as &$item) {
    if (is_array($item)) {
        $item['key3'] = 'val3';
    }
}

Another, more elegant way would be to use array_walk():

array_walk($array, function (&$v, $k) { 
    if (is_array($v)) {
        $v['key3'] = 'val3';
    }
});

This example will work from PHP 5.3, where Closures were introduced.