PHP: Access Array Value on the Fly

Question

In php, I often need to map a variable using an array ... but I can not seem to be able to do this in a one liner. c.f. example:

// the following results in an error:
echo array('a','b','c')[$key];

// this works, using an unnecessary variable:
$variable = array('a','b','c');
echo $variable[$key];

This is a minor problem, but it keeps bugging every once in a while ... I don't like the fact, that I use a variable for nothing ;)

Answer 1

actually, there is an elegant solution:) The following will assign the 3rd element of the array returned by myfunc to $myvar:

$myvar = array_shift(array_splice(myfunc(),2));

Answer 2

function doSomething()
{
    return $somearray;
}

echo doSomething()->get(1)->getOtherPropertyIfThisIsAnObject();

Answer 3

This might not be directly related.. But I came to this post finding solution to this specific problem.

I got a result from a function in the following form.

Array
(
    [School] => Array
            (
                [parent_id] => 9ce8e78a-f4cc-ff64-8de0-4d9c1819a56a
            )
)

what i wanted was the parent_id value "9ce8e78a-f4cc-ff64-8de0-4d9c1819a56a". I used the function like this and got it.

array_pop( array_pop( the_function_which_returned_the_above_array() ) )

So, It was done in one line :) Hope It would be helpful to somebody.

Answer 4

Or something like this, if you need the array value in a variable

$variable = array('a','b','c');
$variable = $variable[$key];

Answer 5

The technical answer is that the Grammar of the PHP language only allows subscript notation on the end of variable expressions and not expressions in general, which is how it works in most other languages. I've always viewed it as a deficiency in the language, because it is possible to have a grammar that resolves subscripts against any expression unambiguously. It could be the case, however, that they're using an inflexible parser generator or they simply don't want to break some sort of backwards compatibility.

Here are a couple more examples of invalid subscripts on valid expressions:

$x = array(1,2,3);
print ($x)[1]; //illegal, on a parenthetical expression, not a variable exp.

function ret($foo) { return $foo; }
echo ret($x)[1]; // illegal, on a call expression, not a variable exp.

Answer 6

This is called array dereferencing. It has been added in php 5.4. http://www.php.net/releases/NEWS_5_4_0_alpha1.txt

update[2012-11-25]: as of PHP 5.5, dereferencing has been added to contants/strings as well as arrays