Associative Arrays (why "=>" instead of just "=" )

Question

While learning this topic "Associative Arrays" in PHP, I am not able to understand, why => is used instead of simply assigning like = i.e what I mean to say is , instead of "David"=>"27" , we can assign "David"="27". Please help me. The reference code is given below:
$people = array("David"=>"27", "Amy"=>"21", "John"=>"42");

Answer 1

It's just how it is, besides, using equal signs would be a bad idea, because it would confuse declaration