php compare two associative arrays

Question

i have these two associative arrays

// the needle array

$a = array(
"who" => "you", 
"what" => "thing", 
"where" => "place",
"when" => "hour"
);

// the haystack array

$b = array(
"when" => "time", 
"where" => "place", 
"who" => "you",
"what" => "thing"
);

i want to check if the $a has a match with the b with it's exact key and value

and if each key and value from $a has an exact match in $b.... i want to increment the value of a variable $c by 1 and so on...

as we've seen from above there 3 possible match... and supposedly results to increment the value of $c by 3

$c = "3";

i hope some genius can help me...

Answer 1

you can look into the php's array_diff_assoc() function or the array_intersect() function.

EDIT

Here's a sample on counting the matched values:

<?php
  $a = array(
    "who" => "you", 
    "what" => "thing", 
    "where" => "place",
    "when" => "hour"
  );
  // the haystack array
  $b = array(
    "when" => "time", 
    "where" => "place", 
    "who" => "you",
    "what" => "thing"
  );
  $c = count(array_intersect($a, $b));
  echo $c;
?>

CODEPAD link.