Question

In the minutes php6 developer meeting, i came across a point where it said that call-time-pass-by-reference is no longer there in PHP6. For example, following both are incorrect for PHP6:

<?php
$foo =& new StdClass();
?>

<?php
function &foo()
{
    return new StdClass();
}

$f = foo();
?>

If we can’t use something like this in PHP6:

$foo =& new StdClass();

What is the alternative to that, is there any way to mimic that?

EDIT:

Ans what about variables in PHP6, can we do that for variables eg:

$this->data =& $_SESSION;

Answer 1

You don’t pass parameters by reference, but you still can/must declare your function/method as receiving parameters by reference.

i.e., you don’t do this (passing parameters by reference) :

my_function(& $my_var);

function my_function($a) {
    // ...
}

But you can do this (declaring the function as receiving parameters by reference) :

my_function($my_var);

function my_function(& $a) {
    // ...
}

And… The code examples you gave are not related to call-time-pass-by-reference, but are related to return-by-reference.

For that second thing, what if you just remove the & ? The instance of the object that’s been created inside the function will be returned, and you’ll still be able to work with it, won’t you ?