Are there any best practices or guidelines to follow when working with arrays in PHP, especially in the context of automatic expansion?

When working with arrays in PHP, especially in the context of automatic expansion, it's important to ensure that you handle array manipulation carefully to prevent unexpected behavior. One common issue is when trying to access an index that doesn't exist, which can lead to automatic expansion of the array and potentially overwrite existing data. To avoid this, always check if an index exists before accessing or modifying it. 

// Example of checking if an index exists before accessing or modifying it
$array = [1, 2, 3];

$index = 3;

if (!isset($array[$index])) {
    $array[$index] = 'new value';
} else {
    // handle existing index
}

print_r($array);

Keywords

arrays PHP automatic expansion guidelines best practices

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