Remove empty array elements with array_filter with a callback function

Question

I'm trying to delete empty elements in an array with the function array_filter.

When i use an external callback like this :

function callback($a) { return !empty($a);}
$arr = array("abc",'','ghi');
$res = array_filter($arr, "callback");

it works as expected.

But if i use array_filter like that :

$arr = array("abc",'','ghi');
$res = array_filter($arr, function($a) { return !empty($a);});

It fails with the error :

PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected T_FUNCTION in test.php on line 2

What am i doing wrong ?

Answer 1

It seems that you’re using a PHP version that does not support anonymous functions (available since PHP 5.3.0).

But array_filter does already filter empty values if you don’t specify a callback function:

If no callback is supplied, all entries of input equal to FALSE (see converting to boolean) will be removed.