Extra, blank row from PDO select on Sqlite - sql

Question

This involves a Sqlite database, PHP 7 and PDO. The query code is:
...
$stmt = $pdo->query('SELECT * FROM images');
while($row = $stmt->fetch(\PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){
$images[] = [
"image_id" => $row["image_id"],
"date" => $row["date"],
"photographer" => $row["photographer"],
...
];
}
echo $stmt->rowCount() . " rows<br>";
echo count($images) . " images<br>";
var_dump($images);
return $images;
}
(Note: This is based on http://www.sqlitetutorial.net/sqlite-php/query/ . It will be revised soon to do prepared statements, enumerating cols, etc., once the problem described here is solved.)
The echos report "0 rows" and "2 images". The var_dump() outputs:
array(2) { [0]=> array(0) { } [1]=> array(14) { ["image_id"]=> ...
So clearly there's an extra, empty array in the first position in the outer array. In the calling code, which collects the $image array as return value, count($array) gives 2 not 1 (and code expecting name/value pairs in each row breaks).
The problem is, there's only one row in the table. This appears clearly on the command line: sqlite> select * from images; gets one row and:
sqlite> select count(*) as c from images;
1
What's wrong here?

Answer 1

Different array syntax solved it.
$stmt = $pdo->query('SELECT * FROM images');
$images = array();
while($row = $stmt->fetch(\PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)){
$images[] = array(
"image_id" => $row["image_id"],
"date" => $row["date"],
"photographer" => $row["photographer"],
...
);
}
I'm still not clear on the reason, but this way avoids the anomalous empty row.