How Can I Efficiently Count Occurrences of a Specific Value in a PHP Array?

Counting Values in an Array with a Specified Value

In the scenario where you have an array with various values and need to count the occurrences of a particular value, it's crucial to find an efficient approach. Imagine an array like:

$array = array('', '', 'other', '', 'other');

Your objective is to determine the number of blank values in the array.

The Inefficient Approach

A naive approach would involve iterating through the array, checking each element against the target value. However, this approach becomes inefficient for large arrays.

function without($array) {
    $counter = 0;
    for($i = 0, $e = count($array); $i < $e; $i++) {
        if(empty($array[$i])) {
            $counter += 1;
        }
    }
    return $counter;
}

The Efficient Approach

To accelerate the process, consider utilizing PHP's array_count_values function. It accepts an array as an argument and returns an array with every unique value as a key and its count as the corresponding value.

$counts = array_count_values($array);
echo $counts['']; // Outputs the number of blank elements

Using this approach, you can efficiently count the occurrences of any specified value in an array, even for large arrays.

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