What are some alternative approaches to creating and populating arrays in PHP that may be more efficient and less error-prone?

When creating and populating arrays in PHP, it is important to consider efficiency and error-proneness. One approach to improve efficiency and reduce errors is to use array functions such as array_map, array_fill, or array_combine to create and populate arrays in a more streamlined and concise manner.

// Using array_map to create and populate an array
$numbers = range(1, 10);
$squaredNumbers = array_map(function($num) {
    return $num * $num;
}, $numbers);
print_r($squaredNumbers);