Strange action with =&

I'm looping through an array and I did this:

    $rate =& $mydata[$prefix];

Now, in some cases $mydata[$prefix] wasn't set/defined, so I expected $rate to not be defined, or at least point to something that wasn't defined. Instead, PHP 5.1.6 set $mydata[$prefix] to nothing. If I had:

    $mydata[1] = 3;
    $mydata[3] = 2;
    $mydata[5] = 1;

And did a loop from $i=1; $i++; $i<=5 I'd get:

    $mydata[1] = 3;
    $mydata[2] = ;
    $mydata[3] = 2;
    $mydata[4] = ;
    $mydata[5] = 1;

Is this expected? A bug? Fixed in 5.2.0? I know I shouldn't set a reference to a variable that doesn't exist, but the expected result is a warning/error, not for PHP to populate an array. Beckman ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
beckman@purplecow.com                             http://www.purplecow.com/

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