title: Why is there json_decode($array, TRUE)?
body: <p>I send a dictionary as JSON to a server. The dictionary contains only 1 key, that is an array of items:</p>
  
  <pre><code>header('Content-type: application/json');
  
  $request = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'));
  
  $array = json_decode($request['array']);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The value for key 'array' is an array, can't be an object.</p>
  
  <p>So, basically these two methods will return the same thing:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$array = json_decode($request['array']);
  
  $array = json_decode($request['array'], TRUE);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Am I right?</strong></p>
  
  <p>The only use for this method is when you want to convert an object into an array:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$array = json_decode($request['object'], TRUE);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Why would you ever want to do that?</p>
  
  <p>I mean, I do understand that there might be applications for this but on the other hand it took me a whole day to digest this way of thinking and it still feels like there's a huge mind gap.</p>
  
  <p>This little convenience messes up with the concrete way of parsing data and is just confusing to a newbie like me.</p>