#20993 [Opn]: Element value changes without asking

ID: 20993 Updated by: nlopess@php.net Reported By: henrik dot gebauer at web dot de Status: Open Bug Type: Documentation problem Operating System: Any PHP Version: 4.0CVS-2002-12-13 New Comment: As you may have noted, we have more than 100 open bugs, so its hard to response quickly. However, if you want to submit a patch to the documentation, we are open to contributions. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2004-04-16 22:59:25] php dot devel at homelinkcs dot com I don't wish to generate unnecessary traffic, however, I have been unable to find any reference to this issue in the current documentation at http://www.php.net/manual. Since, it's been well over a year since this issue (and several related bug reports) has been brought up, can anyone give me an update on this it's status? I consider this a serious problem because, IMHO, the behavior seems illogical from a high-level view of references and copies (cf (from chapter 7 of the manual): "[A]fter assigning one variable's value to another, changing one of those variables will have no effect on the other."). For that reason, furthermore, lack of knowedge of this behavior can make code affected by it quite difficult to debug. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2002-12-18 03:25:45] msopacua@php.net We have discussed this issue and it will put a considerable slowdown on php's performance, to fix this properly. Therefore this behavior will be documented. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2002-12-13 14:51:47] moriyoshi@php.net This bug has a lot to do with the bug reports mentioned below. http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=6417 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=7412 http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=15025 As a workaround, you can write as following to avoid this issue. function theFunction($array) { $array = unserialize(serialize($array)); $array[0] = 2; } ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2002-12-13 12:50:26] moriyoshi@php.net Verified with 4.2.3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2002-12-13 12:42:22] msopacua@php.net Verified and added testcase to CVS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at http://bugs.php.net/20993 -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=20993&edit=1