Why do I have to load a PHP array to a variable before fetching an element?

Question

Why do I have to load a PHP array into a variable before I access its elements?

Why can't I access the elements directly from the result of a function call?

e.g. This works:

$foo = "This is a variable I'm going to split/explode";
$bar = explode(' ', $foo);
echo $bar[1];

But this doesn't:

$foo = "This is a variable I'm going to split/explode";
echo explode(' ', $foo)[1];

It does work from PHP 5.4 and above.

Madara's Ghost
– Madara's Ghost

2013-07-09 13:32:50 +00:00
Commented Jul 9, 2013 at 13:32 — Madara's Ghost
– Madara's Ghost, Commented Jul 9, 2013 at 13:32

John Conde · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-09 13:31:38Z

7

Because array dereferencing only became available in PHP 5.4. If you want to do that you'll need to upgrade to at least that version.

answered Jul 9, 2013 at 13:31

John Conde

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2 Comments

John Conde Over a year ago

They just didn't have that feature. New versions introduce new functionality. PHP 5.4 introduced array dereferencing. The ones before it did not.

Dave Hilditch Over a year ago

Thanks - Looks like I have version 5.3.3 - found by inserting phpinfo() in my code. Looks like it wasn't implemented before because they were worried about memory leaks - schlueters.de/blog/archives/…

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