Would be at all possible to implement this kind of shortcut?

echo function(var)[0];

For example, to print the height of an image: <? echo getimagesize('./path/to/image')[1]; ?>

Sure, if you want more than one of the returned array points, this would not be very efficient, however when you do only need one, it would be a lot nicer than:

<? $tmp = getimagesize('./path/to/image'); echo $tmp[1]; ?>

Anyway, just an idea.