Doc #77808 [Opn->Csd]: Undocumented behaviour on assign by reference with magic getters

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=77808&edit=1 ID: 77808 Updated by: sjon@php.net Reported by: christian dot mohr at insitu dot de Summary: Undocumented behaviour on assign by reference with magic getters -Status: Open +Status: Closed Type: Documentation Problem Package: Documentation problem PHP Version: 7.1.27 -Assigned To: +Assigned To: sjon Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: I'm pretty sure this has been addressed in 7.3+; see for example https://3v4l.org/rMHdN it throws: Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Cannot assign by reference to overloaded object in /in/rMHdN:14 Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2019-03-27 14:19:52] christian dot mohr at insitu dot de Description: ------------ Assigning by reference to an non-existing property of an object works as expected (like any assign-by-value). But if the object contains a magic __get() method the behaviour is undocumented. Why is the magic getter invoked? Why does the assignment fail? Is there any way to get the expected behaviour with the magic getter in place? Removing either the magic getter OR the assign-by-reference "&" (assign-by-value instead) produces the expected result. Test script: --------------- Class CLS { public function &__get($key) { echo "__get " . $key . PHP_EOL; return $this->$key; } } $magicTest = new CLS(); $test = "test"; $magicTest->v = & $test; echo ($magicTest->v ?? "null") . PHP_EOL; Expected result: ---------------- test Actual result: -------------- __get v null ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=77808&edit=1