How to add an array value to the middle of an associative array?

Am I missing something?

$key = 'z';
$offset = array_search($key, array_keys($array));

$result = array_merge
        (
            array_slice($array, 0, $offset),
            array('c' => 3),
            array_slice($array, $offset, null)
        );

---

Handling of nonexistent keys (appending $data by default):

function insertBeforeKey($array, $key, $data = null)
{
    if (($offset = array_search($key, array_keys($array))) === false) // if the key doesn't exist
    {
        $offset = 0; // should we prepend $array with $data?
        $offset = count($array); // or should we append $array with $data? lets pick this one...
    }

    return array_merge(array_slice($array, 0, $offset), (array) $data, array_slice($array, $offset));
}

Demo:

$array = array('a' => 1, 'z' => 2, 'd' => 4);

// array(4) { ["a"]=> int(1) ["c"]=> int(3) ["z"]=> int(2) ["d"]=> int(4) }
var_dump(insertBeforeKey($array, 'z', array('c' => 3)));

// array(4) { ["a"]=> int(1) ["z"]=> int(2) ["d"]=> int(4) ["c"]=> int(3) }
var_dump(insertBeforeKey($array, 'y', array('c' => 3)));

A simple approach to this is to iterate through the original array, constructing a new one as you go:

function InsertBeforeKey( $originalArray, $originalKey, $insertKey, $insertValue ) {

    $newArray = array();
    $inserted = false;

    foreach( $originalArray as $key => $value ) {

        if( !$inserted && $key === $originalKey ) {
            $newArray[ $insertKey ] = $insertValue;
            $inserted = true;
        }

        $newArray[ $key ] = $value;

    }

    return $newArray;

}

Then simply call

$array = InsertBeforeKey( $array, 'd', 'c', 3 );