Using dynamic variable names in PHP

I'm trying to use dynamic variable names. So inside this loop I want to create `$file0`, `$file1`, and `$file2`: for($i=0; $i<=2; $i++) { $("file" . $i) = file($filelist[$i]); } var_dump($file0); The return is `null` which tells me it's not working. I have no idea what the syntax or the technique I'm looking for is here, which makes it hard to research. `$filelist` is defined earlier on.