Just in case someone stumbles across this in 2017 onwards: it turns out that contrary to what is stated in the docs for get_row() and the_row(), both functions return arrays keyed by field internal names and not field user defined names. So you will get:
Array
(
[field_5855ac26cb153] => 'John'
[field_5855ac26cb154] => 'Smith'
[field_5855ac26cb155] => 31
)
…instead of:
Array
(
[name] => 'John'
[surname] => 'Smith'
[age] => 31
)
…as the docs would have you believe. This makes both functions more or less useless for the end user. It has been raised with support back in September that either both functions should return arrays keyed by field names or the docs should be changed as they are misleading. Neither has been done.
