Debian PHP 5.4.27 vs Ubuntu PHP 5.4.16

Question

Well, I'm transferring a little web server from one computer to other, on the 'other' computer I cannot a more updated version of PHP,

I just have to add my files through ssh and that's all, when I load my webpage it says explicitly:

The error is showing on a Debian with PHP 5.4.27 squeeze, the webserver comes from an Ubuntu with PHP 5.4.16 oneiric

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '[' in ~directory~ on line 38

This is the line 38.

$VALUE=$DB->query("a nice sentence")->fetch()[0];

So, i was pretty surprised because PDO was accepted since PHP 5.1, so, i look deeper and i found the possible error, you can't simply do ->fetch()[0], you must separate it in order to be "processed",

However, I have transport this server with this information before, so i really don't know if it's something on the configuration of PHP or maybe the version by itself 5.4.X? You guys know any hint? As I said, i can't just install other updated version of PHP5, what do you recommend?

Have a nice night.

Edit: updated to the issue on the PHP 5.4 now

Answer 1

Apparently, the error was solved by JUST changing the first issue line (the other hundreds of codes that had that wasn't necessary to change, what i believe to be a little weird).

$VALUE = $DB->query("a nice sentence")->fetch()->offset(0);

Answer 2

The error seems triggered by the array dereferencing. This was added in PHP 5.4.. Not sure how you made that work in 5.3.6

http://nl3.php.net/language.types.array.php

To workaround you could try

$VALUE = $DB->query("a nice sentence")->fetch();
echo $VALUE[0];

Answer 3

PHP Version on my ubuntu (where it works):

PHP Version 5.4.16

PHP Version on the Debian (where it does not work):

PHP Version 5.4.27-1~dotdeb.0

This version number was extracted by using phpinfo(); on the index page.