Access array element from function call in php [duplicate]

Question

Background

In every other programming language I use on a regular basis, it is simple to operate on the return value of a function without declaring a new variable to hold the function result.

In PHP, however, this does not appear to be so simple:

example1 (function result is an array)

<?php 
function foobar(){
    return preg_split('/\s+/', 'zero one two three four five');
}

// can php say "zero"?

/// print( foobar()[0] ); /// <-- nope
/// print( &foobar()[0] );     /// <-- nope
/// print( &foobar()->[0] );     /// <-- nope
/// print( "${foobar()}[0]" );    /// <-- nope
?>

example2 (function result is an object)

<?php    
function zoobar(){
  // NOTE: casting (object) Array() has other problems in PHP
  // see e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1869812
  $vout   = (object) Array('0'=>'zero','fname'=>'homer','lname'=>'simpson',);
  return $vout;
}

//  can php say "zero"?       
//  print zoobar()->0;         //  <- nope (parse error)      
//  print zoobar()->{0};       //  <- nope                    
//  print zoobar()->{'0'};     //  <- nope                    
//  $vtemp = zoobar();         //  does using a variable help?
//  print $vtemp->{0};         //  <- nope     

Answer 1

PHP can not access array results from a function. Some people call this an issue, some just accept this as how the language is designed. So PHP makes you create unessential variables just to extract the data you need.

So you need to do.

$var = foobar();
print($var[0]);

Answer 2

This is specifically array dereferencing, which is currently unsupported in php5.3 but should be possible in the next release, 5.4. Object dereferencing is on the other hand possible in current php releases. I'm also looking forward to this functionality!

Answer 3

Array Dereferencing is possible as of PHP 5.4:

• http://svn.php.net/viewvc?view=revision&revision=300266

Example (source):

function foo() {
    return array(1, 2, 3);
}
echo foo()[2]; // prints 3

with PHP 5.3 you'd get

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '[', expecting ',' or ';' 

---

Original Answer:

This has been been asked already before. The answer is no. It is not possible.

To quote Andi Gutmans on this topic:

This is a well known feature request but won't be supported in PHP 5.0. I can't tell you if it'll ever be supported. It requires some research and a lot of thought.

You can also find this request a number of times in the PHP Bugtracker. For technical details, I suggest you check the official RFC and/or ask on PHP Internals.

Answer 4

Well, you could use any of the following solutions, depending on the situation:

function foo() {
    return array("foo","bar","foobar","barfoo","tofu");
}
echo(array_shift(foo())); // prints "foo"
echo(array_pop(foo())); // prints "tofu"

Or you can grab specific values from the returned array using list():

list($foo, $bar) = foo();
echo($foo); // prints "foo"
echo($bar); // print "bar"

Edit: the example code for each() I gave earlier was incorrect. each() returns a key-value pair. So it might be easier to use foreach():

foreach(foo() as $key=>$val) {
    echo($val);
}