Hi,

I hear this often by other developers and I tend to agree with them, that arrays are used often, and often nested, so that having a long syntax for array literals tend to produce less legible code than in other scriping languages.

$a = array(array(1,2), array(3,4), 5, 6);

$b = array('a' => 1, 'b' =>2);

We use arrays in our configurations, in passing complex parameters to functions, fetching information from databases, basically everything. So it adds up.

Some frameworks have somewhat funny attempts to remedy this by introducing "shortcuts" like this: function a() { return func_get-args(); }. Of course this doesn't work when you need to specify the key name, and the overhead isn't worth it.

It looks as there may not be a specific reason not to allow the JS syntax as an alternative syntax (while keeping the current one in parallel):

$a = [[1, 2], [3, 4], 5, 6];

$b = ['a' => 1, 'b' =>2];

There shouldn't be confusion to the parser as the brackets aren't preceded by an identifier.

Was this discussed before on the list?

Regards, Stan Vassilev