Hello, I'm back :)
Good, welcome back! :)
I don't think the $a{1} style is deprecated.. I don't really remember of that decision on the internals mailing list. The E_STRICT warning was even removed.
I think we need to double-check this one.
We discussed it on IRC yesterday and the internals team still feels it's deprecated as of PHP 6. Due to the enormous number of emails/discussion/war the last internals discussion generated on this, few want to discuss it further (or ever again!), but it's generally considered deprecated despite not producing the E_ level error (yet?).
Regards,
Philip