How can placeholders be efficiently added to an array during its creation to avoid later empty spaces?

When creating an array in PHP, placeholders can be efficiently added during its creation by using the array_fill() function. This function allows you to specify the initial value and the number of elements to fill the array with. By using array_fill(), you can avoid having empty spaces in the array and ensure that all elements are properly initialized.

// Create an array with 5 placeholders filled with 'placeholder'
$array = array_fill(0, 5, 'placeholder');
print_r($array);