In PHP, you need to use the list function in order to assign multiple to variables from a list. As in:
$info = array('coffee', 'brown', 'caffeine');
// Listing all the variables
list($drink, $color, $power) = $info;
In Ruby, this is done automagically, so no functions for it needed.
drink, color, power = ['coffee', 'brown', 'caffeine']