Is it possible to reference a specific element of an anonymous array in PHP?

Question

This is probably a simple question, and I'm afraid the answer might be "no", but...

Here's a simple piece of code:

function func1() {
  $bt = debug_backtrace();
  print "Previous function was " . $bt[1]['function'] . "\n";
}

Now... Can this be done without the temporary variable? In another language, I might expect to be able to say:

function func1() {
  print "Previous function was " . (debug_backtrace())[1]['function'] . "\n";
}

Alas, in PHP, this results in an error:

PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected '[' ...

If it can't be done, it can't be done, and I'll use a temporary variable, but I'd rather not.

Answer 1

No, direct dereferencing is unfortunately not supported in current versions of PHP, but will apparently come in PHP 5.4.

Also see Terminology question on "dereferencing"?.