A comment on array_merge mentioned that array_splice is faster than array_merge for inserting values. This may be the case, but if your goal is instead to reindex a numeric array, array_values() is the function of choice. Performing the following functions in a 100,000-iteration loop gave me the following times: ($b is a 3-element array)
array_splice($b, count($b)) => 0.410652
$b = array_splice($b, 0) => 0.272513
array_splice($b, 3) => 0.26529
$b = array_merge($b) => 0.233582
$b = array_values($b) => 0.151298
