How to return an array and get the first element of it in one line in PHP?

Question

this question is just for fun and maybe learning a PHP shorthand trick (if exists) Let\'s assume that I have this code:

$item = $this->get_item($id);
$item =          


        

Answer 1

For the first one, you can do this trick... for other indices, it gets uglier.

list($algo) = explode(':', $password);

I was looking for a more elegant answer but here we are :)