Remove the first n elements from an array in PHP

Learn, how to remove the first element from an array in PHP.

Remove the first n elements

To remove the first n elements from an array, we can use the built-in array_slice() function by passing $array, n as an arguments. So, it returns a new array by removing the first n elements from it.

Here is an example, that removes the first 3 elements from the following array

<?php
$food = array("apples", "cake", "cheese", "popcorn");
$result = array_slice($food, 3);

print_r($result);
?>

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => popcorn
)

In the example above, we have passed 3 as second argument to the array_slice() function. So, it begins the extraction at index 3 and goes upto to the end of an array.

Note: The array_slice() function creates the new array instead of modifying the original array.

If you want to delete n elements from the original array instead of creating a new array, you can use the array_splice function.

$food = array("apples", "cake", "cheese", "popcorn");
 array_splice($food, 0, 3);

print_r($food);

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => popcorn
)