is there any short method to obtain value of array in php

Question

When I obtain a field 'text' of an array I have to do something like this:

$text = isset($tab['text'][0])?$tab['text'][0]:"";

is there any function that returns value when element $tab['text'] exists and "" when not and of course doesn't produce notice in latter case.

Answer 1

$search_array = array('first' => 1, 'second' => 4);
if (array_key_exists('first', $search_array)) {
    echo "The 'first' element is in the array";
}

Answer 2

The ternary operator ?: can be used this way in PHP 5.3:

return $tab['text'][0] ?: '';

Answer 3

$text = @$tab['text'][0];
//------^

Note, $text could be NULL. To work around this:

$text = @$tab['text'][0] . "";
//------^

Answer 4

No, there is no shorter way to do it in PHP. I'm assuming you're looking for something like the javascripts' var foo = bar || false, but PHP only has the ternary operator, like in your example.