Function result is an array

I briefly tried searching the archives for this, but there aren't any handy keywords, so I didn't find anything. Why can't I do this: $year = getdate($timestamp)['year']; (syntax error) while I can do this: $temp = getdate($timestamp); $year = $temp['year']; and is there a way to combine the above into one statement, however ungainly? This doesn't just happen with getdate -- it happens with any function returning an array. I'm using PHP 4.1.2. Dustin -- Dustin Mitchell dustin@ywlcs.org/djmitche@alumni.uchicago.edu http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~dustin/