What is the purpose of using array_chunk in PHP and what are the potential alternatives for dividing elements into columns?

When working with arrays in PHP, the array_chunk function is used to divide an array into smaller chunks or sub-arrays. This can be useful when you want to display data in columns on a webpage or process data in batches. An alternative method to achieve a similar result would be to loop through the array and manually divide the elements into columns based on a specified chunk size. However, this can be more cumbersome and error-prone compared to using the built-in array_chunk function.

// Example of using array_chunk to divide elements into columns
$myArray = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10];
$columns = array_chunk($myArray, 3);

foreach ($columns as $column) {
    echo "<ul>";
    foreach ($column as $item) {
        echo "<li>$item</li>";
    }
    echo "</ul>";
}