#25996 [Com]: Assignment by reference suppress index error

ID: 25996 Comment by: kevin at hatry dot com Reported By: hongnk at hotmail dot com Status: Verified Bug Type: Zend Engine 2 problem Operating System: Irrelevant PHP Version: 5CVS, 4CVS New Comment: As i didnt find this bug before submitting mine (surely because we didnt experience it in the same way), i was asked to add a comment here with my version of the bug so here it is: Description: ------------ When passing a non-existing portion of an array by reference this portion gets created even if the function does not touch the array => it is modified in the calling line. It works with string indexes as well. Reproduce code: --------------- error_reporting(E_ALL); $tab2 = array( ); function do_nothing ( &$var ) { // code here doesnt matter } do_nothing($tab2[10]); var_dump($tab2); Expected result: ---------------- array(0) { } Actual result: -------------- array(1) { [10]=> NULL } Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2003-10-29 14:13:04] moriyoshi@php.net Related to bug #26030 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2003-10-26 21:33:23] hongnk at hotmail dot com Description: ------------ Accessing array with uninitialized index will normally trigger error: $a=array(); $b=$a['unknown']; => undefined index error but if I assign by reference: $b=&$a['unknown']; then PHP no longer throw error. (The same goes for assigning undefined property to an object.) This makes it difficult to debug scripts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=25996&edit=1