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Simple question, simple code. This works:
$x = &$_SESSION['foo'];
This does not:
$x = (isset($_SESSION['foo']))?&$_SESSION['foo']:false;
It throws PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '&'. Is it just not possible to pass by reference while using the conditional operator, and why not? Also happens if there’s a space between the ? and &.
Simple answer: no. You’ll have to take the long way around with if/else. It would also be rare and possibly confusing to have a reference one time, and a value the next. I would find this more intuitive, but then again I don’t know your code of course:
As to why: no idea, probably it has to with at which point the parser considers something to be an copy of value or creation of a reference, which in this way cannot be determined at the point of parsing.