What does "=>" mean in PHP?

Question

What does the => operator mean in the following code?

foreach ($user_list as $user => $pass)

The code is a comment at PHP.net. The user does not specify the value of $user_list, $user or $pass. I normally see that => means equal or greater than.

However, I am not sure about its purpose here because it is not assigned. I read the code as

1. process a list of users in integers
2. such that the value of each user is equal or greater than password

The above does not make sense to me.

Answer 1

=> is the separator for associative arrays. In the context of that foreach loop, it assigns the key of the array to $user and the value to $pass.

Example:

$user_list = array(
    'dave' => 'apassword',
    'steve' => 'secr3t'
);

foreach ($user_list as $user => $pass) {
    echo "{$user}'s pass is: {$pass}
";
}
// Prints: 
// "dave's pass is: apassword"
// "steve's pass is: secr3t"

Note that this can be used for numerically indexed arrays too.

Example:

$foo = array('car', 'truck', 'van', 'bike', 'rickshaw');
foreach ($foo as $i => $type) {
    echo "{$i}: {$type}
";
}
// prints:
// 0: car
// 1: truck
// 2: van
// 3: bike
// 4: rickshaw