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Bug #72981 Interpolated strings cannot be dereferenced directly
Submitted: 2016-08-30 16:59 UTC Modified: 2020-03-03 11:02 UTC
From: nikic@php.net Assigned: nikic (profile)
Status: Closed Package: Scripting Engine problem
PHP Version: master-Git-2016-08-30 (Git) OS:
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
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 [2016-08-30 16:59 UTC] nikic@php.net 
Description:
------------
As of PHP 5.6 it is possible to write "foo"[0]. However, if the string uses interpolation this does not work and leads to a parse error.

Test script:
---------------
<?php
$bar = "bar";
var_dump("foo$bar"[0]);

Expected result:
----------------
string(1) "f"

Actual result:
--------------
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '[', expecting ',' or ')'

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 [2018-03-12 13:35 UTC] cmb@php.net 
> As of PHP 5.6 it is possible to write "foo"[0].

As of PHP 5.5.0, by the way.

> However, if the string uses interpolation this does not work and
> leads to a parse error.

Not sure, if we should try to fix this, since this feature appears
to be rarely useful, and since it is possible to dereference
arbitrary parenthesized expressions (as of PHP 7.0.0) which
appears to be more readable for complex cases at least.  With
regard to Heredoc and Nowdoc direct dereferentiation seems to be
even more doubtful, even if the Flexible Heredoc and Nowdoc
Syntaxes RFC[1] will be implemented.

I suggest to mark this as documentation issue.

[1] <https://wiki.php.net/rfc/flexible_heredoc_nowdoc_syntaxes>
 [2020-01-08 13:43 UTC] nikic@php.net
-Assigned To: +Assigned To: nikic
 [2020-03-03 11:02 UTC] nikic@php.net
-Status: Assigned +Status: Closed
 [2020-03-03 11:02 UTC] nikic@php.net 
This is supported as of PHP 8.
 
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