Question

Is this the proper construct of my wannabe associative array or is there a better method to this?

Each ID key is associated with a value, in this case ID is Nickels(index key) with a value of “5”, assigned to the variable $money1.

$money1['Nickels'] = "5";
$money2['Dimes'] = "10";
$money3['Quarters'] = "25";

Answer 1

Yes. It’s correct. Assuming, you want to have 3 arrays in the end (money1, money2, money3).

If you want one array, you can use this compact notation:

$money = array("Nickels" => "5", "Dimes" => "10", "Quarters" => "25");

.. which is a shorter form of:

$money["Nickels"] = "5";
$money["Dimes"] = "10";
$money["Quarters"] = "25"

Array access:

echo $money["Dimes"]; // prints 10