Every "variable" in PHP is a pair.
> > [cut]
$foo = 1;
/* $foo (label) --------> 1 (value) (is_ref=0, refcount=1) */
$bar = &$foo;
/* $foo (label) ----------> 1 (value) */ /* $bar (label) -------/ is_ref=1, refcount=2 */
Hope that helps.
-Sara
Thanks for the clear explanation :). I understood that in PHP 5 objects are automatically referenced when assigned, and 'primary types' like int, bool, string are normally copied when assigned.
When I do a (very rough) benchmark with strings/ints, assigning (and thus copying) a 1000 bytes string isn't significantly slower than referencing it. Also: memory usage is exactly the same.
Is there any situation in which one might *manually* want to reference a variable instead of assigning it (like: $x =& $y)?
Bert
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