It's not a backwards assignment. It's more like this:
$bar = &$foo;
You now have essentially two variable names 'foo' and 'bar' pointing to the
same chunk of memory inside the computer.
If you change one, you change the other: They are really not two distinct
variables -- They are the same variables, and are aliases for each other.
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----- Original Message -----
From: Noel Akins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Newsgroups: php.general
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2001 10:52 AM
Subject: [PHP] I'm confused about..reffering vars &$
> Ok, I'm reading the manual for the new php4 stuff. Now, I'm not new to
php.
> I started with php/fi with a little script to add links to a database. I
> did a little work in php3. I just don't make enough php stuff to get a
frim
> grip on everything. That is changing as I am building a second pc to serve
> as a dev box for php4. Here is my first question.
>
> This was lifted from the Zend site from the php manual there.
>
> To assign by reference, simply prepend an ampersand (&) to the beginning
of
> the variable which is being assigned (the source variable). For instance,
> the following code snippet outputs 'My name is Bob' twice:
> <?php
> $foo = 'Bob'; // Assign the value 'Bob' to $foo
> $bar = &$foo; // Reference $foo via $bar.
> $bar = "My name is $bar"; // Alter $bar...
> echo $foo; // $foo is altered too.
> echo $bar;
> ?>
>
> What I don't see here is how this prints (echo) "My name is Bob". The
> way I see this is that $bar = &$foo; is a backwards assignment, so that
> when the script cycles through, it changes $foo from Bob to "My name is
> $bar", and, to my error prone thinking, it should print out "My name is My
> name is My name is...".
>
> It would make sense to me if it were:
>
> <?php
> $foo = 'Ed'; // Assign the value 'Ed' to $foo
> $bar = &$foo; // Reference $foo via $bar
> $bar = 'Bob'; // changing $foo to 'Bob'
> $this = "My name is $bar";
> $that = "My name is $foo";
> echo $this; / / prints out My name is
Bob
> echo $that; / / prints out My name is
Bob
> Maybe I'm not seeing how php rereads or cycles through the script once it
> sees a "assign by reference" Could someone explain please?
> Thank you.
>
>
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