compact()

compact() — Create array containing variables and their values.

Built-in function of PHP 8.5. The manual lists it as available in PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8. This page is the reference card: signature, parameters and return value, plus the changelog and the example the manual provides.

Signature

compact(array|string $var_name, array|string ...$var_names): array

Parameters

Parameter	Type	What it takes
...$var_names	array\|string	compact() takes a variable number of parameters. Each parameter can be either a string containing the name of the variable, or an array of variable names. The array can contain other arrays of variable names inside it; compact() handles it recursively.

Return value

Returns the output array with all the variables added to it.

Example

A runnable snippet:

$city = "San Francisco"; $state = "CA"; $event = "SIGGRAPH"; $location_vars = array("city", "state"); $result = compact("event", $location_vars); print_r($result);

Output:

Array ( [event] => SIGGRAPH [city] => San Francisco [state] => CA )

Changelog

Version	Change
8.0.0	If a given string references an unset variable, an E_WARNING level error is now issued.
7.3.0	compact() now issues an E_NOTICE level error if a given string refers to an unset variable. Formerly, such strings have been silently skipped.