Question

Possible Duplicate:
Access array returned by a function in php

The code:

$cnt = mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query("SELECT FOUND_ROWS()"))[0]

Is giving the error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘[‘ in
index.php on line 117

Same for:

$cnt = (mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query("SELECT FOUND_ROWS()")))[0]

This code:

$cnt = mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query("SELECT FOUND_ROWS()"));
$cnt = $cnt[0];

is working fine.

What’s going on here?

Answer 1

It isn’t just a problem with mysql_query–rather, it’s an idiosyncracy in the way that PHP <5.4 handles bracket notation. The following will fail, as well:

function get_array() {
  return array('foo', 'bar');
}

echo get_array()[0];

But, as you observed, setting the result before attempting to retrieve an element works fine:

$arr = get_array();
echo $arr[0];