I have checked in the mailings lists and have found no way to do this, only one other user (css - sutherland) complaining about the same.

Here goes:

How do you assign to an object instance variable within an array?

// This is somewhat perverted w.r.t. my orig. code
// ... lot of class definitions, db queries and such ...
// This is from within a class function. The class has a "has-part" rel. to CartItem 
$this->items[i] = new CartItem();
$this->items[1]->amnt++; // Parser error
$item = $this->items[1];
$item->amnt++;  	// No parser error, but assignments are by value, so nothing
 		// happens to "items[1]

I have also tried fiddling with the {} syntax of $$ variables, but to no avail - help!