[Basic PHP] Treat function or method call as an array?

[eluser]janogarcia[/eluser]
I have these values

Code:

$CI->config->item('returns_indexed_array');
$CI->config->item('returns_index');

This works...

Code:

$array = $CI->config->item('returns_indexed_array');
$index = $CI->config->item('returns_index');

$value = $array[$index];

...but, what if I don't want to create those temporary variables $array and $index? Is it possible to get the value in one shot?

This wouldn't work... Any simple workaround? Am I missing something?

Code:

$value = $CI->config->item('returns_indexed_array')[$CI->config->item('returns_index')];

Found in stack overflow:

Unfortunately, you cannot treat function return values as arrays in PHP. You have to assign the value explicitly.