I saw this behavior this morning and was curious if I'd tripped a bug in PHP (running version 4.3.7 at the moment). I scanned through the bug list for this particular bug but didn't find it. I'm running it by you all because I'm not intimately familiar with the reference system to really be sure that it's a bug and not just my misunderstanding.
A demonstration script is included below: globals $x and $v are set to NULL. q() is called and references globals $x and $v. $x is set to the new class X; $v is set to a reference to a new class Y (by means of a factory function in X, a common structure in PEAR). My version of PHP prints NULL at the var_dump() statement immediately following the call to q(); I would expect it to dump an instance of class Y. So: am I misunderstanding references (and if so, why is the behavior what it is), is this a duplicate of another known bug, is this bug fixed in a newer version of PHP, or should I file a new bug? -Bob <?php class Y // class created by factory in X, below { function Y($t) { $this->a = $t; } } class X { function X() { } function &getY($t) // factory method to create Y and return a ref to it { $k = new Y($t); return($k); } } $x = null; $v = null; function q() { global $x, $v; $x = new X(); // get an X simply to acquire a Y $v =& $x->getY("here"); // use the factory in X to assign a ref // to Y to the global $v } q(); // initialize the globals with X and &Y var_dump($v); // should dump a Y, instead prints NULL ? ?> -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php