What are the potential pitfalls of using recursion in PHP for searching in multidimensional arrays?

One potential pitfall of using recursion in PHP for searching in multidimensional arrays is the risk of exceeding the maximum stack depth if the array is too deeply nested. To solve this issue, you can implement a maximum recursion depth check and handle it gracefully by returning a default value or error message when the limit is reached. 

function searchInArray($needle, $haystack, $depth = 0, $maxDepth = 100) {
    if ($depth > $maxDepth) {
        return "Max recursion depth reached";
    }
    
    foreach ($haystack as $key => $value) {
        if ($key === $needle) {
            return $value;
        }
        
        if (is_array($value)) {
            $result = searchInArray($needle, $value, $depth + 1, $maxDepth);
            if ($result !== "Max recursion depth reached") {
                return $result;
            }
        }
    }
    
    return "Not found";
}

// Example usage
$haystack = [
    'a' => [
        'b' => [
            'c' => 'needle'
        ]
    ]
];

echo searchInArray('c', $haystack); // Output: needle

Keywords

recursion PHP multidimensional arrays search pitfalls

Related Questions