#33643 [Opn]: Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference

ID: 33643 Updated by: sniper@php.net Reported By: Jason at hybd dot net Status: Open -Bug Type: Scripting Engine problem +Bug Type: Documentation problem PHP Version: 5.1.0b2 New Comment: Yes, it is undocumented. But same goes for PHP 4.4.0 too. Reclassified. (this break was intentional and fixed a lot of references related bugs) Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2005-07-11 20:28:07] Jason at hybd dot net Sorry, it's all fair and well making this bogus, but this change breaks ****LOADS**** of existing code, so it is not a bug and it's behavior is NOT documented. The least you could have done is justify why this is not a bug and why this change was introduced into the language! This is really a PHP bug because thi has worked in all versions of PHP prior to this. There has been nothing in the way of warning or anything in recent releases to phase in this change in behaviour like there was with the call by reference thing. Do you expect many thousands of programmers to change their code because if this stupid querk. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2005-07-11 17:32:30] iliaa@php.net Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at http://www.php.net/manual/ and the instructions on how to report a bug at http://bugs.php.net/how-to-report.php . ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2005-07-11 13:06:46] Jason at hybd dot net Description: ------------ This bug is a rehash of 33516, but I can't reopen as I'm not the original author. It seems like you can not pass tempories to function / method parameters. <?php class Foo { public static function bar() { return array('a' => '1234567890'); } } $tmp = Foo::bar(); $var = array_pop($tmp); ?> Seems to work, but it shouldn't be down to the PHP user (imho) to implement this as this change in PHP 5.1 breaks a lot of existing code. Reproduce code: --------------- <?php class Foo { public static function bar() { return array('a' => '1234567890'); } } $var = array_pop(Foo::bar()); ?> Expected result: ---------------- $var = '1234567890'; Foo::bar() gets placed in temporary variable Actual result: -------------- Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=33643&edit=1