php multi-dimensional array remove duplicate

Question

Not sure if this question is a duplicate in need of removal, but I couldn't find the answer elsewhere so I'll have a go at asking.

I've got a 2d array that looks as follows:

Array
(
[0] => Array
    (
        [0] => dave
        [1] => jones
        [2] => [email protected]
    )

[1] => Array
    (
        [0] => john
        [1] => jones
        [2] => [email protected]

    )

[2] => Array
    (
        [0] => bruce
        [1] => finkle
        [2] => [email protected]
    )
)

I'd like to remove those with duplicate emails. So in the above example I'd like to just remove either [][0] or [][2]. I'm not worried about checking against names or anything like that, I just need the sub arrays to be deduplicated based on a single value.

At the moment I have something like this

  if(is_array($array) && count($array)>0){
  foreach ($array as $subarray) {
    $duplicateEmail[$subarray[2]] = isset($duplicateEmail[$subarray[2]]);
    unset($duplicateEmail[$subarray[2]]);
   }
  }

but it just ain't right. Any help appreciated.

Answer 1

A quick solution which uses the uniqueness of array indexes:

$newArr = array();
foreach ($array as $val) {
    $newArr[$val[2]] = $val;    
}
$array = array_values($newArr);

Notice 1: As visible from above, the last match for an email address is used instead of the first. This can be changed by replacing the second line with

foreach (array_reverse($array) as $val) {

Notice 2: The indexes in the resulting array are somewhat mixed up. But I guess this doesn't matter...

Answer 2

Much Simpler Solution.

$unique = array_map('unserialize', array_unique(array_map('serialize', $array)));

echo "<pre>";
print_r($unique);