PHP syntax for dereferencing function result

Array Dereferencing is possible as of PHP 5.4:

• http://svn.php.net/viewvc?view=revision&revision=300266

Example (source):

function foo() {
    return array(1, 2, 3);
}
echo foo()[2]; // prints 3

with PHP 5.3 you'd get

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '[', expecting ',' or ';' 

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Original Answer:

This has been been asked already before. The answer is no. It is not possible.

To quote Andi Gutmans on this topic:

This is a well known feature request but won't be supported in PHP 5.0. I can't tell you if it'll ever be supported. It requires some research and a lot of thought.

You can also find this request a number of times in the PHP Bugtracker. For technical details, I suggest you check the official RFC and/or ask on PHP Internals.

This is specifically array dereferencing, which is currently unsupported in php5.3 but should be possible in the next release, 5.4. Object dereferencing is on the other hand possible in current php releases. I'm also looking forward to this functionality!

PHP can not access array results from a function. Some people call this an issue, some just accept this as how the language is designed. So PHP makes you create unessential variables just to extract the data you need.

So you need to do.

$var = foobar();
print($var[0]);