Bug #14513: Fetch multiple elements from an array

From: daniel@lorch.cc Operating system: PHP version: 4.1.0 PHP Bug Type: Feature/Change Request Bug description: Fetch multiple elements from an array I was thinking about a new feature. Fetching multiple elements would be a cool feature, wouldn't it? This would look like this; $array[0,1]; or $array['name','address']; and would allow constructions like this: for($i=0;$i<count($array);$i+=2) { list($odd,$even)=$array[$i,$i+1]; } instead of: for($i=0;$i<count($array);$i+=2) { $odd=$array[$i]; $even=$array[$i+1]; } This syntactically follows the specification of using the "comma" to provide multiple elements/indices, such as it's already the case for functions. Therefore adding this feature wouldn't deteriorate the code-readability. Also, I cannot think of any way using this feature to encourage bad coding practices. $array from the above example could be a datafile from a guestbook where always a pair of lines represent "username" and "comment" (instead of using "|" or anything else as a delimitor). Your comments? -- Edit bug report at: http://bugs.php.net/?id=14513&edit=1