Does PHP feature short hand syntax for objects?

Question

In javascript you can easily create objects and Arrays like so:

var aObject = { foo:\'bla\', bar:2 };
var anArray = [\'foo\', \'bar\', 2];

Answer 1

As of PHP 5.4, you can do this:

$array = ['foo'=>'bla', 'bar'=>2];

It's not much shorter, but you'll appreciate it if you need to use a lot of hard coded nested arrays (which isn't altogether uncommon).

If you want an object, you would still need to cast each array:

$object = (object) ['foo'=>'bla', 'bar'=>2];