i dunno, i found that kind of special functions which are actually language constructs like list(), isset(), etc always ugly. Ok, some more syntax sugar to let these things not look like normal functions is of course an improvement, but i wish they would do some more radical changes to the language. Why not add multiple return values like in golang to achieve that syntax? Isn't exactly that list() should emulate in some way? Than deprecate that list() crap and throw it away in 7.2. But instead they will keep that list "function" forever along that new bracket syntax because they are afraid some code from the 90s would break. On the other hand they don't stop adding minor complete irrelevant changes that break existing code from yesterday.