this really jacked my cool as lazy , he ' s still learning <| sep |> I was forced to do so during my orthodontia at the request of the doctor and the person paying my mother . Since it was an expense of both time and money if a bracket had to be replaced , I complied . I also wasn ' t supposed to bite into bagels those had to be cut or ripped into pieces . <| sep |> bass heavy or vshaped is the most obvious pick . <| sep |> The main question is where is this superior to arrayslice ? It ' s more concise , but not necessarily more readable . And it ' s also not particularly great , given that in PHP we have no separate arrays and dictionaries . I . e . take 1 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 What will do ? Take 3 elements starting at offset 1 ? Take elements from offsets 1 to 3 ? Take 3 elements starting at entry with key 1 ? offset 1 means here the second element , i . e . 0 2 from that example array . In PHP array indices refer to keys , and they ' re not necessarily identical to position in array . Having now refer at something starting at the offset 1 would be quite inconsistent . So it ' s hard to get intuitive semantics here .