Doc #70181 [NEW]: Missing information which confuses readers

From: emilxp at abv dot bg Operating system: PHP version: Irrelevant Package: Documentation problem Bug Type: Documentation Problem Bug description:Missing information which confuses readers Description: ------------ --- From manual page: http://php.net/manual/en/features.gc.refcounting-basics.php --- I started reading the article at the page stated above and got confused by the sentence "The "refcount" gets decreased by one when any symbol linked to the variable container leaves the scope (e.g. when the function ends) or when unset() is called on a symbol.". I believe there's at least one more way to reduce the refcount and that's by assignment. I think that this missing information can confuse some people when they first read it. I think it should be stated that reducing the refcount can happen by making $a and/or $b reference to different zvals and possibly other ways that I couldn't come up with. Test script: --------------- <?php $a = "bla"; $b = $a; // now $a and $b reference "bla" xdebug_debug_zval('a'); xdebug_debug_zval('b'); $a = "this"; // show that the refcount decreases xdebug_debug_zval('a'); xdebug_debug_zval('b'); $b = "some"; // now both $a and $b point to different zvals. // the first "bla" zval must be food for the garbadge collector xdebug_debug_zval('a'); xdebug_debug_zval('b'); -- Edit bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=70181&edit=1 -- Try a snapshot (PHP 5.4): https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=trysnapshot54 Try a snapshot (PHP 5.5): https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=trysnapshot55 Try a snapshot (trunk): https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=trysnapshottrunk Fixed in SVN: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=fixed Fixed in release: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=alreadyfixed Need backtrace: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=needtrace Need Reproduce Script: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=needscript Try newer version: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=oldversion Not developer issue: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=support Expected behavior: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=notwrong Not enough info: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=notenoughinfo Submitted twice: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=submittedtwice register_globals: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=globals PHP 4 support discontinued: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=php4 Daylight Savings: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=dst IIS Stability: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=isapi Install GNU Sed: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=gnused Floating point limitations: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=float No Zend Extensions: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=nozend MySQL Configuration Error: https://bugs.php.net/fix.php?id=70181&r=mysqlcfg