This is probably a bit of a large request because it involves the syntax of the language itself, but having slicing syntax similar to that of Python would be really useful.
For example:
PHP Code:
foo = "bar";
baz = foo[0:1]; // return a slice from index 0 to 1
echo(baz); // will echo "ba"
baz = foo[:-1]; // return a slice from the end
echo(baz; // will echo "r"
It's extremely useful and shortens common string and array operations greatly.
Really, better support for treating strings as arrays in general would be nice.