php - Interpreting return value of function directly as an array

Question

Is there a way in PHP to interpret the return value of a function directly as an array?

lets say i have a function:

function getArray()  {
  return array("foo", "bar");
}

instead of writing:

$array = getArray();
$var = $array[1];

i want to access "bar" directly somewhat like:

$var = getArray()[1]; //this causes an error

Answer 1

What you want is called array dereferencing and will be supported only as of PHP 5.4 (which is the upcoming PHP version).

For now you can use the list language construct:

list(, $var) = getArray();

If you need the value to pass it to some other function, you can still hack around the limitation (this is just for reference, not something you should use):

func(${'_'.!$_=getArray()}[1]); // using the $_ var
func(${!${''}=getArray()}[1]);  // using the $ var