Question

is there a way to get the n-th element of a splitted string without using a variable?

My PHP code always looks like this:

$foo = explode(" ", "bla ble bli");
echo $foo[0];

Is there a shorter way maybe like in Python?

print "bla ble bli".split(" ")[0]

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This is what people should be using instead of explode most of the time:

$foo = strtok("bla ble bli", " ");

It cuts off the first string part until the first " ".

If you can’t let go of explode, then the closest idiom to accomplish [0] like in Python is:

$foo = current(explode(...));

If it’s not just the first element, then it becomes a tad more cumbersome:

$foo = current(array_slice(explode(...), 2));   // element [2]