Just wondering why this syntax is not working in PHP? What workaround do most people use - if you want to write concise one-liner code?
$str = explode(" ", "foo bar")[0];
// thought $str would be $foo. instead I get error.
// guess I hadn't noticed this issue before.
PHP is not chainable, meaning you cannot combine the explode function with an accessor, such as [0]. What you want to do is:
$arr = explode(" ", "foo bar");
$str = $arr[0];
"Chainable" may not be the right word, but either way, you can't combine functions like that.
As people have said, it can't be done like that. If you really, really want to do it in one line, you can use a ternary statement.
$str = ($tmp=explode(" ", "foo bar")) ? $tmp[0] : '';
echo $str; // "foo"
This can look 'less ugly' if you wrap that into a function.
function single_explode($delim, $str, $index) {
return ($tmp=explode($delim, $str)) ? $tmp[$index] : '';
}
$str = single_explode(" ", "foo bar", 0);
echo $str;
A additional method is use array_shift, that discard the first element of array and return it.
<?php
echo array_shift(explode(" ", "foo bar")); // === foo
?>
See this full example. Don't use it on strict mode.
current() without any warning. (Cause that's a language construct, not a function.)
current() function, but now I know that is very useful for that.