The example in the article is poorly chosen, because an associative array (map) would be more suitable. What you wrote is almost the same with PHP:

    ['abc' => 2, 'def' => 3][$x] ?? 'default';

PHP's `match` is a kind of functional `switch`. For instance, in the following example, an associative array would induce several useless function calls, and `match` is more readable than a sequence of if+returns:

    return match ($key) {
        "id", "ID" => unique_id(),
        "UUID" => generate_uuid(),
        default => findExternalId($key),
    };

You can do the same in PHP, but again, not as nice to read:

['abc' => 2, 'def' => 3][$x] ?? 'default';

Easy to write. Less easy to read.

Plus you have to actually allocate and evaluate the whole map right? Like if the values are FromASlowComputation() you'd have to do something else.