Why is some_function()[some_index] invalid syntax?

On Friday 11 January 2008, Zoltán Németh wrote:

> > So, make all your functions return objects, and have the object have a
> > method called get or index or something like that that returns the index
> > requested. :)
> >
> > Better yet, make everything an object: String, Numeric, Array, etc
>
> and call it Java ;)

More like C#. :-) Java still has primitives.

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Nathan Nobbe wrote:
> On Jan 11, 2008 3:45 AM, Zoltán Németh <znemeth@alterationx.hu> wrote:
>
>> and call it Java ;)
>>
>
> or perhaps javascript :)
> function cool() {
> return [1, 2, 3];
> }
> alert(cool()[0]);
>
> -nathan
>
I too thought this was weird...

example:
<?php
function a($key)
{
$data = array(1 => array(1 => 'hello'), 2 => array(1 => 'good day'));
return $data[$key];
}
echo a(1)[1];
?>

Of course this is a completely useless example, but being able to do
syntax like that would be nifty, as you could do something like
$User->FindUserByID(73)['username'] if the method returned an array of
user data.

On Thu, January 10, 2008 10:00 pm, Arlen Christian Mart Cuss wrote:
> Why is it that if I try to evaluate an index of an array returned by a
> function immediately, a syntax error is produced? (unexpected '[',
> expecting ',' or ';')

Because PHP is not C.

It's language-design was chosen to not let you write complicated
expressions that only confuse beginners.

There was talk of letting this work on php-internals, but it was shot
down, as I recall...

Or perhaps not, but nobody actually submitted a patch to make it work,
so it's one of those "someday" features...

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