Associative Arrays

An associative array, each ID key is associated with a value.

When storing data about specific named values, a numerical array is not always the best way to do it.

With associative arrays we can use the values as keys and assign values to them.

In this example we use an array to assign ages to the different persons:

$ages = array("Peter"=>32, "Mary"=>30, "Joe"=>34);

This example is the same as example 1, but shows a different way of creating the array:

$ages['Peter'] = "32";

$ages['Mary'] = "30";

$ages['Joe'] = "34";

The ID keys can be used in a script:

<?php

$ages['Peter'] = "32";

$ages['Mary'] = "30";

$ages['Joe'] = "34";

echo "Peter is " . $ages['Peter'] . " years old.";

?>

The code above will output:

Peter is 32 years old.