access data in return value

Question

I have the line

if( getdate($start_time)['hours'] == 0 ){

and I am getting

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '['

But if I change the line to

$start_time_as_date = getdate($start_time);
if( $start_time_as_date['hours'] == 0 ){

I don't get an error. Do I always have to save an array to a variable to access its data? Or is there some way to make the first line work?

Answer 1

Yes you do. PHP does not allow you to access an array return value in that way.