array wizardry

Hi all. Can anyone help me out here?

A script like this...
[code]
echo "<form action='processform.php' method='POST'>\n";
echo "<select name='name[sphere]'>\n";
echo "<option value='colour[] '>Select One</option>\n";
echo "<option value='colour[red]'>1</option>\n";
echo "<option value='colour[green]'>2</option>\n";
echo "<option value='colour[blue]'>3</option>\n";
echo "</select><br>\n";
echo "<select name='name[cube]'>\n";
echo "<option value='colour[]'>Select One</option>\n";
echo "<option value='colour[red]'>1</option>\n";
echo "<option value='colour[green]'>2</option>\n";
echo "<option value='colour[blue]'>3</option>\n";
echo "</select><br>\n";
echo "<input type='submit' value = 'go'>\n";
echo "</form>\n";[/code]

can produce an array like this...

[code]$_POST:
Array
(
[name] => Array
(
[sphere] => colour[red]
[cube] => colour[green]
)

)[/code]


but I guess I'm after an array more like this...
[code]
$_POST:
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[primitive] => sphere
[colour] => red
)

[1] => Array
(
[primitive] => sphere
[colour] => green
)

)[/code]

I suspect that this can be done by simply revising the form, without
the need for any additional post-processing.

Going one step further, I'd really like values to passed to the array
ONLY if a value other than the default is selected, but I guess I can
just pass all the values and then use a loop to filter the results.

Any thoughts?

> Ouch, don't use echo for this, exit PHP and use normal HTML, it's faster and
> kinder for your server.

In reality, the combobox, and all its values, are populated by the
results of a query. Under these circumstances, would you still
advocate the 'stop-start' approach?

> The post processing would be the absolute simplest way, the example is a
> simple and not caring about if the indata is sent in the correct format.
> If you must do it on the other end, you would need to take help of javascript
> and maybe use json objects which you then can transfer into an array in PHP if
> you have the json extension (or write your own small parser in php)

No thanks. I'll heed your sage advice instead.

Cheers.