The two keys from the key => value pairs are considered equal only if (string) $key1 === (string) $key2 . In other words a strict type check is executed so the string representation must be the same.
<?php
$array1 = array('blue' => 1, 'red' => 2, 'green' => 3, 'purple' => 4);
$array2 = array('green' => 5, 'blue' => 6, 'yellow' => 7, 'cyan' => 8);
var_dump(array_diff_key($array1, $array2));
?>
The above example will output:
array(2) { ["red"]=> int(2) ["purple"]=> int(4) }