How to find first/second element of associative array when keys are unknown?

use these functions to set the internal array pointer:

http://ch.php.net/manual/en/function.reset.php

http://ch.php.net/manual/en/function.end.php

And this one to get the actual element: http://ch.php.net/manual/en/function.current.php

reset($groups);
echo current($groups); //the first one
end($groups);
echo current($groups); //the last one

If you wanna have the last/first key then just do something like $tmp = array_keys($groups); .

$array = array('Alpha' => 1.1,'Bravo' => 2.2,'Charlie' => 3.3,'Delta' => 4.4,'Echo' =>5.5, 'Golf' => 6.6);

$pos = 3;

function getAtPos($tmpArray,$pos) {
 return array_splice($tmpArray,$pos-1,1);
}

$return = getAtPos($array,$pos);

var_dump($return);

OR

$array = array('Alpha' => 1.1,'Bravo' => 2.2,'Charlie' => 3.3,'Delta' => 4.4,'Echo' =>5.5, 'Golf' => 6.6);

$pos = 3;

function getAtPos($tmpArray,$pos) {
    $keys = array_keys($tmpArray);
    return array($keys[$pos-1] => $tmpArray[$keys[$pos-1]]);
}

$return = getAtPos($array,$pos);

var_dump($return);

EDIT

Assumes $pos = 1 for the first element, but easy to change for $pos = 0 by changing the $pos-1 references in the functions to $pos