For those that don't know PHP associated arrays are equivalent pythons dictionaries. They are implemented as an ordered map.

https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.array.php

Its pretty much the main data type used in php. Once you get used to it is pretty powerful for dynamic languages. They even have built in sorts:

https://www.php.net/manual/en/array.sorting.php

They are "simple arrays" that have numeric indexes, but I find those used less frequently. (They can morph into the key->value pair).