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Possible Duplicate:
PHP syntax for dereferencing function result

I have a string, which looks like 1234#5678. Now I am calling this:

$last = explode("#", "1234#5678")[1]

Its not working, there is some syntax error...but where? What I expect is 5678 in $last. Is this not working in PHP?

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  • 4
    You'll be able to do this (Array Dereferencing) in PHP 5.4, not in the current 5.3 Commented Jan 11, 2012 at 15:15

5 Answers 5

33

Array dereferencing is not possible in the current PHP versions (unfortunately). But you can use list [docs] to directly assign the array elements to variables:

list($first, $last) = explode("#", "1234#5678");

UPDATE

Since PHP 5.4 (released 01-Mar-2012) it supports array dereferencing.

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2 Comments

and if you have many values in string then you can use $last = end(explode('#', $string));
Alternate for list is list(,$last) = ..... Then you won't have the first variable hanging when you don't need it.
13

Most likely PHP is getting confused by the syntax. Just assign the result of explode to an array variable and then use index on it:

$arr = explode("#", "1234#5678");
$last = $arr[1];

1 Comment

Wow, that sucks :D ... ok, good I know now.
8

Here's how to get it down to one line:

$last = current(array_slice(explode("#", "1234#5678"), indx,1));

Where indx is the index you want in the array, in your example it was 1.

Comments

5

You can't do this:

explode("#", "1234#5678")[1]

Because explode is a function, not an array. It returns an array, sure, but in PHP you can't treat the function as an array until it is set into an array.

This is how to do it:

 $last = explode('#', '1234#5678');
 $last = $last[1];

Comments

3

PHP can be a little dim. You probably need to do this on two lines:

$a = explode("#", "1234#5678");
$last = $a[1];

Comments

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