Finite Hate Machine

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

<?php
function monolithic_dimensions() {
    return array(1, 4, 9);
}
 
print monolithic_dimensions()[0]; // syntax error, unexpected '['
?>

1
2
3
4
5
6

<?php
/* ... */
 
$temp = monolithic_dimensions();
print $temp[0]; // Prints 1
?>

1
2
3
4

def monolithic_dimensions(): 
    return [1, 4, 9]
 
print monolithic_dimensions()[0] # Prints 1

1
2
3
4
5

def monolithic_dimensions
    return [1, 4, 9]
end
 
print monolithic_dimensions()[0] # Prints 1

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

#include <stdio.h>
 
int const *monolithic_dimensions() {
    static int const dimensions[] = {1, 4, 9};
    return dimensions;
}
 
int main() {
    printf("%d\n", monolithic_dimensions()[0]); /* Prints 1 */
}

4 Responses to “I really don’t know what you mean”

1. Ian P. Christian says:

   January 11, 2010 at 9:13 pm

   I think it’s accidently by design ;)

   It’s know, and apparently might be supported in PHP6.

   Reply
   • Owen Jacobson says:

     January 12, 2010 at 2:15 am

     Ooh. Is there a bug for this somewhere? Searching the PHP bugs database for “array” or “index” is a lot time consuming.

     Reply
2. seutje says:

   March 2, 2010 at 7:20 am

   what really intrigues me is that
   
function foo() {
$bar = new stdClass();
$bar->baz = 'meh';
return $bar;
}
print foo()->baz; // prints 'meh'


   seems to work fine

   Reply
   • Owen Jacobson says:

     March 2, 2010 at 6:37 pm

     That’s probably a consequence of PHP’s “organic” development: array indexing has existed for most of PHP’s life, while the -> dereference operator was introduced in PHP 4, when the PHP community had started to grok the idea that expressions should be interchangable.

     Reply