Is there a PHP equivalent of "new Array (number)" in javascript?

Question

I was trying to convert basic Javascript function into PHP, and I saw that one of the variables was declared var Variable = new Array (13).

I know that PHP variables are declared like: $variable = array()

but what about the "13" in new Array(13)? does that translate to $variable = array(13)? I've tried that but it didn't seem to work.

This in Javascript

var results = new Array (13);

becomes this in PHP, am I correct?

$results = array(13);

Answer 1

Actually, in this context, you're creating an array of size 13.

You don't really need to preallocate arrays in PHP, but you can do something like:

$result = array_fill( 0, 12, null);

This will create an array with 13 elements (indexes 0 through 12) whose values are null.

Answer 2

new Array(someNumber) in JS creates an array containing someNumber elements which are undefined. Unless you want that you should always use [...] to create an array with some elements since that syntax is not ambiguous while new Array() works differently depending on the number and type of arguments.

array(13) in PHP however creates an array containing a single value 13.

A roughly similar function in PHP is array_fill(0, 12, null). However, PHP might allocate an empty array and then grow it while filling it.