php - How do I weed out similar items from an associative array? -

update: edited question incorrectly, it's fixed now

let's have following associative array:

array (  [postponement no issue man utd (bbc) ] => 8  [postponement no issue man utd ] => 7  [postponement no issue man utd: manchester united have no issue on sunday's game @ chelsea being ... ] => 3 ) 

you'll notice term "postponement no issue man utd" appears in 3 keys. want turn array new array this:

array ( [postponement no issue man utd] => 18 ) 

where 18 sum of values key contains "postponement no issue man utd".

in other words: if 1 key appears inside key, latter dropped fom new array , it's value added on former key's value.

is possible , how? in advance.

depending on size of data may not feasible. there more optimal solution, works:

<?php $array = array(     'postponement no issue man utd (bbc)' => 8,      'postponement no issue man utd' => 7,     'postponement no issue man utd: manchester united have no issue on sunday\'s game @ chelsea being ...' => 3 );  $keys = array_keys($array); usort($keys, 'lengthcmp'); $flippedkeys = array_flip($keys);  $data = array();  foreach ($keys $k => $v) {  $sum = 0;   foreach ($array $key => $val)  {   if (stripos($key, $v) !== false)   {    $sum += $val;    unset($array[$key]);    unset($keys[$flippedkeys[$v]]);   }  }   $data[$v] = $sum; }  foreach ($data $key => $val) {  if ($val == 0)   unset($data[$key]); }  var_dump($data);  function lengthcmp($a, $b) {  return strlen($a) - strlen($b); } ?> 

output:

array(1) {["postponement no issue man utd"] => int(18)} 

and data set:

$array = array(     'test test' => 1,     'postponement no issue man utd (bbc)' => 8,      'postponement no issue man utd' => 7,     'postponement no issue man utd: manchester united have no issue on sunday\'s game @ chelsea being ...' => 3,     'test' => 1,     'not here' => 1,     'another test' => 1 ); 

output:

array(3) {     ["test"] => int(3)     ["not here"] => int(1)     ["postponement no issue man utd"] => int(18) }