Accessing mysql_fetch_object with variable names

So, I have a newbie syntax question, sorry to bother you with noddy stuff. I have fetched a set of results from a database quesry using mysql_fetch_object. I want to iterate through a subset of the columns from each result, as defined by a separate array. I don't seem to be able to find the correct syntax for referencing the specific property of the object with a variable name. Here's my broken code: $tabarray = array("bio", "research", "publications", "supervision"); $staffdata = mysql_fetch_object( $result ); foreach ( $tabarray as $tab ) { echo "<li>$staffdata->$tab</li>\n"; } Hope that's clear what I'm trying to do. I know I could iterate through every database column and discard any column not in tabarray or use eval() to build a line of code that did the trick but I'm sure there must be a more elegant way to get $staffdata->$tab to interpolate to $staffdata->bio etc and I'm just too inexperienced to know what it is. Thanks in advance for your help folks. -- BD