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At first I thought this article might be about array programming languages[1], but then I remembered today's date. If I understand correctly, this "technique" relies on the fact that PHP "arrays" are associative structures that might be called a map in conventional terminology- wouldn't "Map-oriented programming" make more sense?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Array_programming_language

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You are correct. PHP arrays are actually just ordered maps, so "map-oriented programming" would be appropriate in PHP. However, there is no traditional array implementation in PHP, so calling it "map-oriented programming" within the context of PHP would be ambiguous.

That all said, this "technique" could be used with a traditional array, in theory. The array in the example is fixed-length, and the keys themselves aren't really used at all.

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