PHP smarty and subarrays

Hi

1) Does anyone know of a good PHP Smarty forum?  There was one, but
they took it off & went to Reddit - Gone downhill since then (very few
people transferred)

or can i ask my smarty questions here? (not many folks may use smarty ??)

2) Question:-

I know how to assign values within a template:

{if !isset($HIDEMAINMENU)}{assign var="HIDEMAINMENU" value="0"}{/if}

however, does anyone know the correct way of assigning (or retrieving)
 sub-arrays?

(PHP) $myarray["animals"]["movies"]["settings"]["trees"] = 5;

How do I set it to do the same thing with smarty:-  the only examples
i can see, assign NEW arrays (not assigning new keys/values to an
existing array)

Or

How to assign a sub-array value  to a $temp  variable (not an array)

When I try the obvious things - i get all sorts of errors

--

Gordon.