One language made the mistake of believing that indexed arrays and associated arrays are the same. Javascript does not; the array-like syntax for accessing properties in Javascript is not in any way affecting an actual array. And versus that one language there are a thousand that realize you shouldn't put your apples and oranges in a single structure. PHP's associative arrays aren't the same as mIRC's hash tables anyway, for one thing they're sorted. Not that makes the design any less flawed...
In any case, the simple fact is that arrays and hash tables are not the same, so trying to shoehorn them into using the same commands and identifiers is ridiculous.
