I was quite excited to see that php 5.4 was getting some sugar for array definitions. e.g. "array(1,2,3)" would finally become "[1,2,3]". I was also excited to see "array dereferencing" was fixed or accessing an array by index after it is returned from a function e.g. "func()[index]". However let us be clear in noting that this does NOT mean it has attained the flexibility one would anticipate. For instance you can not immediately access an array after declaring it such as "['name' => 'peter', 'age' => 30]['age']" results in a syntax error. Of course you could combine both of the new features to do "func(['name' => 'peter', 'age' => 03])['age']" - which probably covers the majority of ways in which it would be used. The other issue I have is the inability to access a function upon it's return from function application e.g. "func(1)(2)" will result in a syntax error. This is problematic for higher order techniques that benefit dynamic languages.
Why would anyone want features such as those I have outlined above? People designing "in language" domain specific languages benefit greatly from such flexibility. Particularly in a language which already limits facilities for creating such mythical beasts.
That being said - I will gladly let go of my personal hack for passing in name/value pairs to a function which I have lovingly/jokingly referred to as "appositive expressions" e.g. "func('key', 'value', 'key2', 'value2')" can now become "func(['key' => 'value', 'key2' => 'value2'])". It is not surprising at all that php finally gets this feature as ruby finally bit the bullet and now accepts the json esque ":" in place of the "hash rocket =>". '
I should mention that the addition of "traits" will go miles in cleaning up some otherwise convoluted approaches to attaining mixins in php! I am very excited to see how this is utilized by the different frameworks.
