Why can't I do this:

 $year = getdate($timestamp)['year'];

(syntax error) while I can do this:

 $temp = getdate($timestamp);
 $year = $temp['year'];

it seems that a complete parser should be able to parse the first line.  Others have suggested writing a function to duplicate this functionality, but this can get pretty ugly.  Still others have suggested eval(), but that's playing with fire when you're using data from the network.