Why can't I access the exploded array element immediately?

Question

Why can't I immediately access elements in the array returned by explode()?

For example, this doesn't work:

$username = explode('.',$thread_user)[1]; 
//Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '[

But this code does:

$username = explode('.',$thread_user); 
$username = $username[1];

I don't usually program in PHP, so this is rather confusing to me.

Answer 1

The reason it isn't obvious how to do what you want is that explode could return false. You should check the return value before indexing into it.

Answer 2

Actually, PHP simply does not support this syntax. In languages like Javascript (for instance), the parser can handle more complex nesting/chaining operations, but PHP is not one of those languages.

Answer 3

Since explode() returns an array, you may use other functions such as $username = current(explode('.',$thread_user));