That's fair enough . Still learning a lot about php, and found out what to do if function array dereferencing isn't an option. It's simple and probably obvious enough, but just incase someone stumbles upon this looking for info on what to do if function array dereferencing isn't available, w/ FAD example: return $this->results()[0]; w/o FAD example: list($first_value) = $this->results(); return $first_value; I hope those examples are enough to show the difference . Also, if the above examples seem to be of any use, might a mod add tags to this thread equivalent to something like "Function" "Array" "Dereferencing" ? I don't see an option to do it myself.