On December 12, 2017 7:38:54 AM GMT+01:00, Stanislav Malyshev 
<smalys...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Hi!
>
>> I would rather discourage usage of references. Since PHP 7 the cost
>of
>> breaking cow isn't as expensive anymore, but receiving values by
>value
>> and returning by value is more idiomatic imo. Using objects can be
>more
>> efficient.
>
>Objects are kind of overkill when you just need a modifyable array. And
>copying an array when you just need to add one value to a K-size array
>is still not a good idea for many apps. O(n) vs O(n^2) still matters.
>One should definitely be careful not to overuse refs, but there are
>still valid cases for using them.

The issue, as you well know, is that references disable copy-on-write. Thus 
assume you have code like this:

function with_ref(&$a) {
   count ($a);
}

function no_ref($a) {
  count($a);
}

The count in with_ref() will copy the array, while no_ref() can use copy on 
write and won't actually copy.

johannes

--
PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

Reply via email to