Working with foreach Loops

There's a special loop, the foreach loop, that makes working with complex variables such as arrays easier. We'll get the details on foreach in the next chapter, but we'll take a quick look at it here. Arrays store multiple data items, and this loop lets you loop over arrays without using a loop index. Here's how you use it:

 foreach (array_expression as $value) statement foreach (array_expression as $key => $value) statement

You can see an example in phpforeach.php, Example 2-9, where foreach is looping over an array of fruits and echoing each to the browser window.

Example 2-9. Using the foreach loop, phpforeach.php

 <HTML>     <HEAD><TITLE>Using the foreach loop</TITLE></HEAD>     <BODY>         <H1>Using the foreach loop</H1>             <?php                 $arr = array("apples", "oranges", "bananas");                 foreach ($arr as $value) {                    echo "Current fruit: $value<BR>";                }            ?>       </BODY> </HTML>

The results appear in Figure 2-10; the loop was able to loop over all the items in the array automatically. The specifics of this loop are coming up in Chapter 3.

Figure 2-10. Using the foreach loop.