How to create data structure with key duplicates in php instead of default hash?

Question

I want to create wrapper class, which will enable keys duplicates while default hash does not allow it. Class should use member overloading mechanism introduced in php5, so it would imitate all the behavior standard hash has. For example, I want to have smth like

$var => obj( :values_arr -> array(
      obj(:key -> 'mykey', :value -> 'val1'), 
      obj(:key -> 'mykey', :value -> 'val2')
    )
)

If I want to get $var['mykey'], it should return array('val1', 'val2'), but if I want to extend obj with new 'mykey' => 'value' pair, I would call

$val['mykey'][] = 'value'

Main idea is that behavior of the hash was preserved and after attempt to assign value to using existing key, it wouldn't be overwritten, but appended to the list.

How would you imitate other data structures in php5 (before 5.3)? Are there any known solutions or examples you want to share?

Answer 1

like this

class MultiMap
{
    protected $map = array();

    function __set($key, $val) {
        if(!isset($this->map[$key]))  
           return $this->map[$key] = $val;
        if(!is_array($this->map[$key]))
           $this->map[$key] = array($this->map[$key]);
        $this->map[$key][] = $val;
    }
    function __get($key) {
       return $this->map[$key];
    }
}

$m = new MultiMap;
$m->foo = 1;
$m->foo = 2;
$m->bar = 'zzz';
print_r($m->foo);
print_r($m->bar);

but the whole idea looks a bit odd to me. Can you explain why you need this?

it's not clear for me why you need operators as keys in your AST perhaps a structure like this would be more convenient

   ('op' => 'AND', 'args' => [
        (op => AND, args => [
            (op  => atom, value => word1),
            (op  => atom, value => word2),
        ]),
        (op => AND, args => [
            (op  => atom, value => word3),
            (op  => atom, value => word4),
        ])
    ])