Creating Anonymous Objects in PHP

In JavaScript, anonymous objects can be created easily. However, can this technique also be applied to PHP?

Terminology Explanation

The term "anonymous" is not entirely accurate when discussing objects. Rather, it should be referred to as "object of anonymous type."

PHP Object Creation

In PHP, all objects have a designated class. The default class is stdClass, and objects of this class can be instantiated using the following syntax:

$obj = new stdClass;
$obj->aProperty = 'value';

Additional Syntax Convenience

Alternatively, casting an array to an object provides a more streamlined syntax:

$obj = (object)array('aProperty' => 'value');
print_r($obj);

Array Casting Caveat

It's worth noting that casting an array to an object may produce unexpected results. Array keys that are not valid PHP variable names, such as those starting with digits, may behave unexpectedly.