PHP prepend associative array with literal keys?
The answer is no. You cannot prepend an associative array with a key-value pair.
However you can create a new array that contains the new key-value pair at the beginning of the array with the union operator +. The outcome is an entirely new array though and creating the new array has O(n) complexity.
The syntax is below.
$new_array = array('new_key' => 'value') + $original_array;Note: Do not use array_merge(). array_merge() overwrites keys and does not preserve numeric keys.
In your situation, you want to use array_merge():
array_merge(array('fruit1'=>'cherry', 'fruit2'=>'blueberry'), array('fruit3'=>'apple', 'fruit4'=>'orange'));To prepend a single value, for an associative array, instead of array_unshift(), again use array_merge():
array_merge(array($key => $value), $myarray);