Characters allowed in php array keys?

Question

I have some php array keys that are populated with a lot of weird characters.

Is this allowed? Are there any constraints to what I cannot use?

Answer 1

According to the manual:

The key can either be an integer or a string. The value can be of any type.

Additionally the following key casts will occur:

• Strings containing valid integers will be cast to the integer type. E.g. the key "8" will actually be stored under 8. On the other hand "08" will not be cast, as it isn't a valid decimal integer.
• Floats are also cast to integers, which means that the fractional part will be truncated. E.g. the key 8.7 will actually be stored under 8.
• Bools are cast to integers, too, i.e. the key true will actually be stored under 1 and the key false under 0.
• Null will be cast to the empty string, i.e. the key null will actually be stored under "".
• Arrays and objects can not be used as keys. Doing so will result in a warning: Illegal offset type.

The manual again:

A string is series of characters, where a character is the same as a byte. This means that PHP only supports a 256-character set, and hence does not offer native Unicode support. See details of the string type.

So in short, any string can be a key. And a string can contain any binary data (up to 2GB). Therefore, a key can be any binary data (since a string can be any binary data).

Some random (valid) abuse of array keys:

$w = array(chr(0) => 'null byte?', chr(rand(0, 255)) => 'random byte?'); var_dump($w); 

Answer 2

The key must be a string or an integer. There are some casts that take place, but I think the manual does a good job of explaining:

The key can either be an integer or a string. The value can be of any type.

Additionally the following key casts will occur:

• Strings containing valid integers will be cast to the integer type. E.g. the key "8" will actually be stored under 8. On the other hand "08" will not be cast, as it isn't a valid decimal integer.
• Floats are also cast to integers, which means that the fractional part will be truncated. E.g. the key 8.7 will actually be stored under 8.
• Bools are cast to integers, too, i.e. the key true will actually be stored under 1 and the key false under 0.
• Null will be cast to the empty string, i.e. the key null will actually be stored under "".
• Arrays and objects can not be used as keys. Doing so will result in a warning: Illegal offset type.