PHP 7 Quick Scripting Reference, Second Edition

© Mikael Olsson 2016

Mikael Olsson, PHP 7 Quick Scripting Reference, 10.1007/978-1-4842-1922-5_27

27. References

Mikael Olsson¹ 

(1)Hammarland, Finland

A reference is an alias that allows two different variables to write to the same value. There are three operations that can be performed with references: assign by reference, pass by reference, and return by reference.

Assign by Reference

A reference is assigned by placing an ampersand (&) before the variable that is to be bound.

$x = 5;$r = &$x; // r is a reference to x$s =& $x; // alternative syntax

The reference then becomes an alias for that variable and can be used exactly as if it was the original variable.

$r = 10; // assign value to $r/$xecho $x; // "10"

Pass by Reference

In PHP, function arguments ...