PHP: Can I reference a single member of an array that is returned by a function?

Question

any idea how if the following is possible in PHP as a single line ?:

... It doesn

Answer 1

I am guessing that this is a built-in or library function, since it sounds like you cannot edit it directly. I recommend creating a wrapper function to give you the output you need:

function functionThatReturnsOneElement( $arg )
{
    $result = functionThatReturnsAnArray( $arg );
    return $result[0];
}
$firstElement = functionThatReturnsOneElement();

Answer 2

You can do this in one line! Use array_shift().

<?php

echo array_shift(i_return_an_array());

function i_return_an_array() {
    return array('foo', 'bar', 'baz');
}

When this is executed, it will echo "foo".

Answer 3

Unfortunately, that is not possible with PHP. You have to use two lines to do it.

Answer 4

list() is useful here. With any but the first array element, you'll need to pad it with useless variables. For example:

list( $firstElement ) = functionThatReturnsAnArray();
list( $firstElement , $secondElement ) = functionThatReturnsAnArray();

And so on.

Answer 5

If it's always the first element, you should probably think about having the function return just the first item in the array. If that is the most common case, you could use a little bit of coolness:

function func($first = false) {
    ...
    if $first return $array[0];
    else return $array;
}

$array = func();
$item = func(true);

My php is slightly rusty, but i'm pretty sure that works.

You can also look at array_shift() and array_pop().

This is probably also possible:

array(func())[0][i];

The 0 is for the function.

Answer 6

$firstItem = current(returnsArray());