In a new post to his site Leonid Mamchenkov talks about complex arrays in PHP and links to two articles offering different opinions on their use.

Now that PHP 7+ sorted out a whole bunch of problems with type-hinting of parameters, return values, variables and properties, we turn our attention to somewhat deeper issues.

Array is a native citizen in PHP. Arrays are very convenient and are widely used. However, if you stop and think about the times where you had to figure out somebody else’s code, I’m pretty sure complex arrays will come to mind at some point.

The first article takes the positive approach, showing you how to create better handling for complex arrays in your applications. The second takes the opposite approach, showing how to avoid complex data structures in your code, opting for classes and objects instead. He notes that he thinks both articles have their good and bad points and references another blog post of his that provides yet another way to solve the need for complex data structures.