This question already has an answer here:
In most languages, I have to initialize an associative array before I can use it:
data = {}
data["foo"] = "bar"
But in PHP I can just do
data["foo"] = "bar"
Are there any repercussions to doing this? Is this "the right way" to write PHP?
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Basically it's the same, and no you won't find any problem or repercussion.
But if you like you can do this:
$a = array();
You can read more in the PHP page
Is the same, but is not a good idea, the next is a copy-paste from php documentation.
If $arr doesn't exist yet, it will be created, so this is also an alternative way to create an array. This practice is however discouraged because if $arr already contains some value (e.g. string from request variable) then this value will stay in the place and [] may actually stand for string access operator. It is always better to initialize variable by a direct assignment.