some question about use zephir develop php extension ？

[010test]

hello erveryone, i‘m a beginner, i taste use zephir to write some commonly used php function as php extension, i read the development documentation and finished, then i started to write, although success, but i still has some question like follows：

for this php function, the problem is in the code

    /**
     * Get the start timestamp and end timestamp of the month in which a timestamp is located
     * @param int $timestamp
     * @return array
     */
    final public static function getMonthBeginEnd(int timestamp = 0) -> array {
        array arr = [];

        if !timestamp {
            //here, why must add (int)? otherwise complie error, the function time() return value is originally an int
            let timestamp = (int)time();
        }

        var year = date("Y", timestamp), month = date("m", timestamp), d = date("t", strtotime(year . "-" . month));

        let arr["begin"] = strtotime(year . "-" . month);
        let arr["end"] = mktime(23, 59, 59, month, d, year);

        return arr;
        //the return why not can write like follow?
        return ["begin" => strtotime(year . "-" . month), "end" => mktime(23, 59, 59, month, d, year)];
    }

how to write like the follow code ?

for var i = date("d", startTime); i <= date("d", endTime); let i++ {......} 

can't find example in the documentation, now i write it replace while.

my english is not very good, the question it should be clear, thank god for answer !

[Jeckerson]

You will need to declare date("d", endTime) into separate variable.

[010test]

thanks, Please help me with the other two questions, thanks a lot.

[danhunsaker]

The reason the return can't be written as you propose is the same as the reason you couldn't write the for loop the way you proposed. You have to create variables before you can use them - raw values can only be returned if they are basic "scalar" types. For complex types, such as arrays, you need to have a variable to store the result in so that there's something to pass back to the caller. C passes complex types by reference (well, sort of; pointers are a bit more complex than that), meaning you have to have a variable from which to return the reference (or, well, memory address). Since Zephir compiles to C, it has to be quite a lot stricter about that sort of thing than pure PHP, which abstracts all that away by making every value a complex type.

I could go on for hours, but the short answer is: You have to have a variable to shove complex operations into.

It's a bit more verbose, but it's also quite a lot safer, so it works out.

As to needing to cast time() to int ... I'd need to do some digging to say for sure.