theoretical PHP arrays

I trying to find a reason why array functions are not allowed to be
used as normal arrays. To clarify, I'm allowed to write

array(), despite its appearance, is not a function - it's an operator.
But it won't work with functions too.

Maybe is THIS the reason why it doesn't work in PHP? ;-)

I'd suppose the first reason for that would be nobody proposed a patch
that would allow the parser to process such things. ;) If there's one,
we could then discuss its merits.

Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Products Engineer
stas@zend.com http://www.zend.com/

I trying to find a reason why array functions are not allowed to be
used as normal arrays. To clarify, I'm allowed to write

$arr = array( "maria", "mario", "luigi", "luisa");
echo $arr[1];

but I'm not allowed to write

echo array( "maria", "mario", "luigi", "luisa")[1];

In PHP documentation I read that "array" is a language construct, not
a function. So this may be the reason. But I also tried with

echo (explode (" ", "maria mario luigi luisa"))[1];

and this doesn't work either (even if "explode" is a function). Not
surprisingly,

$arr = explode (" ", "maria mario luigi luisa");
echo $arr[1];

does work. So, if I can straightforwardly divide by, say, 2 the
integer output by a function, why shouldn't I be allowed to
straightforwardly use the array output by a function?

This is not something completely weird that I'm asking. In Visual
Basic (that I know mustn't be the most loved programming language for
PHP users) you can say

print array( "maria", "mario", "luigi", "luisa")(1)

Maybe is THIS the reason why it doesn't work in PHP? ;-)

Thanks for your consideration and help

It was discussed last month, but as I recall, some nasty "what if"
scenarios cropped up, and nobody came up with a reasonable way to do
this...

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