Question

function returnsAnArray () {   return array ('test'); }  echo returnsAnArray ()[0]; 

generates a syntax error in PHP. What’s the most efficient way to directly obtain an element from a returned array without assigning the result to a temp variable?

Answer 1

Here’s one way, using the list language construct

function returnsAnArray () {   return array ('test'); }  list($foo)=returnsAnArray(); 

You could grab a sequence of elements from an offset by combining this with array_slice

list($third,$fourth,$fifth)=array_slice(returnsAnArray(), 2, 3);