Purpose of Array() Function

[SchweppesAle]

Was just wondering what the difference is between the following lines of code.  Is the array() function faster maybe?

 

$array['blah'] = 'output';
echo $array['blah']; //returns output

 

or

$array = array('blah' => 'output');
echo $array['blah'];  //returns output

[Alex]

Array() isn't a function. It's a language construct, there's really no benefit to doing it either way, for the most part it's just different ways of doing things. But say you're putting 10 objects into an array, it would be easier to use the Array() language construct than to rewrite $array['index'].. 10 times.

[taquitosensei]

array() is more convenient if you're adding lots of values to an array

 

$array=array('blah'=>'output','wha?'=>'input','whatever'=>'aux','etc'=>'somethingwitty'); 

that's the only difference, there's no real performance hit either way

 

 

[Mchl]

And it looks nice if you indent it well:

 

$array = array(
  'blah'     => 'output',
  'wha?'     => 'input',
  'whatever' => 'aux',
  'etc'      => 'somethingwitty',
);