I got used to this notation for creating empty arrays and add named elements to them when needed;
$array = [];
// in case there is an error
$array["error"][] = "new error message as element 0 of $array['error']";
Now I learned that the [] notation for arrays does not work in older versions of PHP, like PHP 5.2.
Instead I have to do;
$array = array(
"error" => array()
);
array_push($array["error"], "new error message as element 0 of $array['error']");
This way is a little bit inconvenient in my case because the great thing about the first code snippet is that the "error" entry in $array
is only created when there is an actual error, whereas in the latter case the entry (although empty) exists either way.
Is there a way to get similar 'functionality' (i.e. specifying/adding named elements when needed, not at initialisation) in a way that is also easily readable in PHP 5.2?