How to insert element into arrays at specific position?

Cleaner approach (based on fluidity of use and less code).

/**
 * Insert data at position given the target key.
 *
 * @param array $array
 * @param mixed $target_key
 * @param mixed $insert_key
 * @param mixed $insert_val
 * @param bool $insert_after
 * @param bool $append_on_fail
 * @param array $out
 * @return array
 */
function array_insert(
    array $array, 
    $target_key, 
    $insert_key, 
    $insert_val = null,
    $insert_after = true,
    $append_on_fail = false,
    $out = [])
{
    foreach ($array as $key => $value) {
        if ($insert_after) $out[$key] = $value;
        if ($key == $target_key) $out[$insert_key] = $insert_val;
        if (!$insert_after) $out[$key] = $value;
    }

    if (!isset($array[$target_key]) && $append_on_fail) {
        $out[$insert_key] = $insert_val;
    }

    return $out;
}

Usage:

$colors = [
    'blue' => 'Blue',
    'green' => 'Green',
    'orange' => 'Orange',
];

$colors = array_insert($colors, 'blue', 'pink', 'Pink');

die(var_dump($colors));

This is an old question, but I posted a comment in 2014 and frequently come back to this. I thought I would leave a full answer. This isn't the shortest solution but it is quite easy to understand.

Insert a new value into an associative array, at a numbered position, preserving keys, and preserving order.

$columns = array(
    'id' => 'ID',
    'name' => 'Name',
    'email' => 'Email',
    'count' => 'Number of posts'
);

$columns = array_merge(
    array_slice( $columns, 0, 3, true ),     // The first 3 items from the old array
    array( 'subscribed' => 'Subscribed' ),   // New value to add after the 3rd item
    array_slice( $columns, 3, null, true )   // Other items after the 3rd
);

print_r( $columns );

/*
Array ( 
    [id] => ID 
    [name] => Name 
    [email] => Email 
    [subscribed] => Subscribed 
    [count] => Number of posts 
)
*/

I do that as

    $slightly_damaged = array_merge(
        array_slice($slightly_damaged, 0, 4, true) + ["4" => "0.0"], 
        array_slice($slightly_damaged, 4, count($slightly_damaged) - 4, true)
    );

This is another solution in PHP 7.1

     /**
     * @param array $input    Input array to add items to
     * @param array $items    Items to insert (as an array)
     * @param int   $position Position to inject items from (starts from 0)
     *
     * @return array
     */
    function arrayInject( array $input, array $items, int $position ): array 
    {
        if (0 >= $position) {
            return array_merge($items, $input);
        }
        if ($position >= count($input)) {
            return array_merge($input, $items);
        }

        return array_merge(
            array_slice($input, 0, $position, true),
            $items,
            array_slice($input, $position, null, true)
        );
    }

Very simple 2 string answer to your question:

$array_1 = array(
  '0' => 'zero',
  '1' => 'one',
  '2' => 'two',
  '3' => 'three',
);

At first you insert anything to your third element with array_splice and then assign a value to this element:

array_splice($array_1, 3, 0 , true);
$array_1[3] = array('sample_key' => 'sample_value');

try this one ===

$key_pos=0;
$a1=array("a"=>"red", "b"=>"green", "c"=>"blue", "d"=>"yellow");
$arrkey=array_keys($a1);
array_walk($arrkey,function($val,$key) use(&$key_pos) {
  if($val=='b')
    {
        $key_pos=$key;
    }
  });
$a2=array("e"=>"purple");
$newArray = array_slice($a1, 0, $key_pos, true) + $a2 +
        array_slice($a1, $key_pos, NULL, true);
print_r($newArray);

Output

Array (
      [a] => red
      [e] => purple
      [b] => green
      [c] => blue
      [d] => yellow )

This can be done by array.splice(). Please note array_splice or array_merge doesn't preserve keys for associative arrays. So array_slice is used and '+' operator is used for concatenating the two arrays.

More details here

$array_1 = array(
    '0' => 'zero',
    '1' => 'one',
    '2' => 'two',
    '3' => 'three',
  );
  
  $array_2 = array(
    'zero'  => '0',
    'one'   => '1',
    'two'   => '2',
    'three' => '3',
  );
  $index = 2;
  $finalArray = array_slice($array_1, 0, $index, true) +
                $array2  +
                array_slice($array_2, $index, NULL, true);
print_r($finalArray);
/*
Array
(
    [0] => zero
    [1] => one
    [10] => grapes
    [z] => mangoes
    [two] => 2
    [three] => 3
)
*/

I've created a function (PHP 8.1), which allows you to insert items to associative or numeric arrays:

function insertItemsToPosition(array $array, string|int $insertAfterPosition, array $itemsToAdd): array
    {
        $insertAfterIndex = array_search($insertAfterPosition, array_keys($array), true);
        if ($insertAfterIndex === false) {
            throw new \UnexpectedValueException(sprintf('You try to insert items to an array after the key "%s", but this key is not existing in given array. Available keys are: %s', $insertAfterPosition, implode(', ', array_keys($array))));
        }

        $itemsBefore = array_slice($array, 0, $insertAfterIndex + 1);
        $itemsAfter = array_slice($array, $insertAfterIndex + 1);

        return $itemsBefore + $itemsToAdd + $itemsAfter;
    }

You can insert elements during a foreach loop, since this loop works on a copy of the original array, but you have to keep track of the number of inserted lines (I call this "bloat" in this code):

$bloat=0;
foreach ($Lines as $n=>$Line)
    {
    if (MustInsertLineHere($Line))
        {
        array_splice($Lines,$n+$bloat,0,"string to insert");
        ++$bloat;
        }
    }

Obviously, you can generalize this "bloat" idea to handle arbitrary insertions and deletions during the foreach loop.