Your example would work, but there's a reason you might want different keys. My company's current web app is written in CakePHP, which has a love for arrays. Some of my queries look like this:

  $booking = $this->Booking->find('first', array('conditions' => array('Booking.booking_id' => $id), 'contain' => array('Review', 'Desk' => array('fields' =>
 array('provider_id', 'category_id'), 'Provider' => array('city', 'name'), 'ProviderCategory' => array('fields'   => array('provider_id', 'category_id'), 'DeskCategory' => 'name')))));

It's essentially not readable, but with [] it would work much better, and I still want to give keys to arrays.

As an FYI, you might want to look into custom find methods if you haven't already: https://github.com/josegonzalez/documentation/blob/master/03...

Well, arrays start with index 0, so if the indexes where 1 less it would be the same. Your example would be equivalent to

  [0 => [4, 5, 6], 1 => [7, 8, 9], 2 => [10, 11, 12]]

In addition, you only need to specify the first key to create a one-based array. Indexing will carry on from there.

    [1 => [4, 5, 6], [7, 8, 9], [10, 11, 12]]

I think it might? http://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/php-src/branches/PHP_5_4/tests...