referencing a function that returns an array

[hessodreamy]

Is it possible to directly reference an element in an array returned by a function, without assigning the array to a variable first? Like this:

$the_element_I_want = function_that_returns_an_array()[2] 

I've never found a way to do it (not tried massively hard though), but it bugs me, because its very easy in, for example, java & javascript.

[bokeh]

I'd like to be able to do this too but unfortunately this method is not available in PHP.

[NogDog]

You can get the first or last value via array_shift() or array_pop(), respectively.

$firstValue = array_shift(function_that_returns_array());
$lastValue = array_pop(function_that_returns_array()); 

[NogDog]

Untested, but seems like it should work to get a value from the middle:

$midValue = array_shift(array_slice(function_that_returns_array(), 2)); 

[hessodreamy]

Yeah any function to do it is pretty simple. I'm using

function arrayElement($arr, $index)
{
	if(isset($arr[$index]))	return $arr[$index];
	else return false;
}

But I'm still annoyed that there's no built-in construct to do it.

[bokeh]

function arrayElement($arr, $index)
{
    if(isset($arr[$index]))    return $arr[$index];
    else return false;
} 

This is bad because the array element itself may itself contain false, leading to misleading results.

[hessodreamy]

Yes indeed. It worked for what I was doing at the time, but yeah I'll have to rework it for future use. Cheers

[chazzy]

Why would you want to? function results are not static - for each request they would get rerun, thus slowing down the performance of the system. if you can guarantee that it will only reference one element, then it should be fine to do.

Also, you could use a wrapper class to do this, rather than what is being proposed.

[bokeh]

Why would you want to?

It just means you can get the value of an element part way through an array without setting an intermediate variable. Obviously though if you need more than one value from that array it would unnecesarilly raise the workload.

[chazzy]

It just means you can get the value of an element part way through an array without setting an intermediate variable.

I'm not sure what you mean by this statement.

[bokeh]

I'm not sure what you mean by this statement.

Well in javascript if I want to access the third link in the second paragraph I can do this:

LINK = document.getElementsByTagName('p')[1].getElementsByTagName('a')[2].href 

In PHP it would be more like:

doc = document
paragraphs = doc.getElementsByTagName('p')
paragraph_2_links = paragraphs[1].getElementsByTagName('a')
link_3 = paragraph_2_links[2]
link_3_url = link_3.href 

In the second example a lot of unnecessary arrays are being set.

[hessodreamy]

Untested, but seems like it should work to get a value from the middle:

PHP Code:
$midValue = array_shift(array_slice(function_that_returns_array(), 2));

True that my function could return a FALSE element and give misleading results. However using the above code does not give an error if the required index does not exist, which might be what you want but is different behaviour from normal array referencing. Using this function:

function arrayElement($arr, $index) 
{ 
    return $arr[$index]; 
}

accurately emulates the referencing of the array (or seems to) ie it will reference the element if it's there, otherwise kick off an error. And it circumvents the necessity of setting a variable for the array.

Naturally, if you're going to be referencing more than 1 element in the array you would set it to a variable. You pick that up pretty early in java type stuff.

[NightShift58]

When you do this ...

function arrayElement($arr, $index) { 
    return $arr[$index]; 
} 

... PHP does create an array, even if only temporarily. From a memory or CPU standpoint, there's no advantage there. I understand the issue of not wanting to use a $variable name for the results of a function. But is it worth the overhead?

[hessodreamy]

I understand that an array is created. It's purely cleanness of code that I'm trying to attain here, not performance improvements.

[NightShift58]

That much I understood.

When I referred to "overhead", I not only meant performance but human overhead, as well.

When you start using functions over functions to "hide" something, in this case an array, you don't necessarily contribute to that cleanness. As long as you're writing code for personal use, all is fine. But if an error pops up and your code is visited by another programmer, it may become an issue.

Of course, I realize, it's all in the definition of "cleanness".