title: column access with multidimensional array in php
body: <p>I have a 2-D array of integers. I'd like to initialize it in column order, and then access it in row order. Is it possible to initialize in PHP in column order without explicitly iterating over every row?</p>
  
  <p>For example, in R, one can do</p>
  
  <pre><code>my2d = matrix(nrow=2, ncol=2)  # create 2x2 matrix
  my2d[,1] = c("a","c")  # initialize column 1 in a single statement
  my2d[,2] = c("b","d")  # initialize column 2 in a single statement
  print(my2d[1,])        # returns "a" "b"
  print(my2d[2,])        # returns "c" "d"
  </code></pre>