PHP Are you referring to an associative array from a string?

"CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS $tables[users]";

Works but..

"CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS $tables['users']";

Does not.

I do not want to do this

$usersTable = $tables['users'];
"CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS $usersTable";

I heard that it was considered bad practice to reference a key from an associative array without some sort of quotes around it. Is this true or is my first way of doing it preferred?

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You can do this with braces:

"CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS {$tables['users']}";

Or through concatenation:

'CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS ' . $tables['users'];