What References Are Not
As said before, references are not pointers. That means, the following construct won't do what you expect:
<?php
function foo(&$var)
{
$var =& $GLOBALS["baz"];
}
foo($bar);
?>
What happens is that $var in foo will be bound with $bar in the caller, but then re-bound with $GLOBALS["baz"]. There's no way to bind $bar in the calling scope to something else using the reference mechanism, since $bar is not available in the function foo (it is represented by $var, but $var has only variable contents and not name-to-value binding in the calling symbol table). You can use returning references to reference variables selected by the function.
English translation
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Document created the 30/01/2003, last modified the 26/10/2018
Source of the printed document:https://www.gaudry.be/en/php-rf-language.references.arent.html
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References
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