Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites

Indexing Arrays

So far we've only seen arrays indexed by integers, but it is also permissible to use strings. Sometimes these are called associative arrays, or hashes. They are helpful in situations where you are collecting different types of information into one array. You could build into your code a system where element zero is a name, element one is a location, and element two is an occupation. Listing 5.3 is a more elegant way to accomplish this.

Listing 5.2. Adding to an Array

Since we aren't indexing the array with integers, we can't just pull out each value starting at zero. If you've turned ahead briefly to skim the array functions ...