Re: Bug or Feature or just plain obvious?

Please submit bug reports at http://bugs.php.net/ Goba Lars Schultz wrote:

Hi there... When writing a classfunction that returned an array and passed it to array_pop like: array_pop($obj->getArray()); I encountered the problem that my original array was modified...so i ended up having one less after every call...which I did not expect, because the getArray() function should return a copy after all... So I fooled around a bit and found this, one is able to FORCE a classfunction, and only classfunctions, to return a reference and not a copy. the function does not have to be defined as: function &blah(){return $this->foo;} But when I tried the same with a global function and variable, I could not reproduce this. So...isn't this odd?...and certainly unexpected? (since most array modification functions have expect a reference as an argument i can't even decide modify ONLY the copy) Maybe I am just pestering but It unnerved me that there might be other, similiar bugs/features... IMHO one should not be able to force references...not if the class designer clearly did not want this. I did not know where to put this comment...so...feel free to add, modify, ignore...:) Take care and stay tuned... Lars <? $testArray = array('foo', 'bar'); function getArray(){

    global $testArray;
    return $testArray;

} $testString = 'blah'; function getString(){

    global $testString;
    return $testString;

} $testReference =& getString(); //force a reference $testReference = 'bloo'; echo 'globalFunction: '; print_r($testString); $testReference =& getArray(); //force a reference $testReference = array(); echo '<br>globalFunction: '; print_r($testArray); echo '<hr>'; class test{

    var $testArray;
    var $testString;
    function test(){
        $this->testArray = array('foo', 'bar');
        $this->testString = 'blah';
    }
    function getArray(){ return $this->testArray; }
    function getString(){ return $this->testString; }

} $testObj = new test(); $testReference =& $testObj->getArray(); //force a reference $testReference = array(); echo 'classFunction: '; print_r($testObj->testArray); $testReference =& $testObj->getString(); //force a reference $testReference = 'bloo'; echo '<br>classFunction: '; print_r($testObj->testString); ?>