RFC: Const array/string dereference

• Version: 1.0
• Date: 2011-11-30
• Author: Xinchen Hui laruence@php.net
• Status: Discuss
• First Published at: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/constdereference

A little improvement to make things consistent.

base on feature request: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=60408:

Please add array constructor dereferencing support

like JavaScript, C# and all languages excluding PHP 5.4

<?php

 $i=0;
 print(array('pa','th')[$i++]); // pa
 print(['wa','ss'][$i++]); // ss

?>

I wrote a patch to make php support const array/string dereference

after patched, following script:

echo array(1, 2, 3)[0]; //output 1
echo "foobar"[2]; //output o
echo "foobar"["foo"][0] // output f
 
echo [1,3,4][2]; //output 4

works.

• http://www.laruence.com/php-dev/php-5.4-trunk-req60408.patch

• http://www.laruence.com/php-dev/const_dereference_001.phpt
• http://www.laruence.com/php-dev/const_dereference_002.phpt
• http://www.laruence.com/php-dev/const_dereference_003.phpt

• 2011-11-30 Xinchen Hui: Initial RFC creation
• 2011-12-13 Xinchen Hui: Start voting