Passing objects as a reference and extracting the index of an associative array.

Hi, i am using the smarty template engine. Here is the problem that I would like to ask about: function initTop(&$page, $array) { for ($i=0; $i<sizeof($array) { $page->assignVars(, $array[$i]) } } The function is supposed to know which object's attributes she is supposed to change. Do I have to pass the object as a reference? Have never worked with References before. The array is supposed to be associative. The funcion assignVars() is called like this: $objektname->assignVars("indexname of ass. array", $arraywert); How do I get the indexname for each arrrayvalue, so I can pass it to the function assignVars? Is there a php function? Thank you very much.