Question

Example:

list($fruit1, $fruit2) = array('apples', 'oranges');

code above of course works ok, but code below:

list($fruit1, $fruit2) = array('fruit1' => 'apples', 'fruit2' => 'oranges');

gives: Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in....

Is there any way to refer to named keys somehow with list like list('fruit1' : $fruit1), have you seen anything like this planned for future release?

Answer 1

EDIT: This approach was useful back in the day (it was asked & answered nine years ago), but see Kerem’s answer below for a better approach with newer PHP 7+ syntax.

Try the extract() function. It will create variables of all your keys, assigned to their associated values:

extract(array('fruit1' => 'apples', 'fruit2' => 'oranges'));
var_dump($fruit1);
var_dump($fruit2);