Re: Is this a missing feature?

But the feature is useless :)

Here, I removed the reference, so we can stop fussing over it (it wasn't the question to begin with), and here's an example of a potential use for this (a stupid example, but still...). I'm not weighing out the benefits of references, I'm striving to achieve the cleanest and most elegant code I can, because the larger the project, the more code you have to read, and the uglier it can get. That's where a language like Ruby excels. There's less syntactical crap, it's very easy to read, and it's caused me to consider switching to eRuby (like mod_perl, allows <% ruby this, ruby that %> in your html) because it is structurally easier and more geared towards larger projects. (that last statement will probably get me murdered on a PHP list) But honestly, the only problem is finding a host running eRuby that I don't have to maintain myself. I'm lazy, after all. later, lux <?php function a ($hash, $text = "") {

      $attr_text = "";
      while (list ($k, $v) = each ($hash)) {
         $attr_text .= " $k=\"$v\"";
      }
      return "<a$attr_text>$text</a>";

} function img ($hash) {

      $attr_text = "";
      while (list ($k, $v) = each ($hash)) {
        $attr_text .= " $k=\"$v\"";
      }
      return "<img$attr_text />";

} // works this way $attrs = array (

      "href" => "http://www.google.com/",
      "target" => "_blank"

); echo a ($attrs, "Visit Google!"); echo "\n\n"; // also this way (thanx teodor!) echo a ($attrs = array (

        "href" => "http://www.google.com/",
        "target" => "_blank"

), "Visit Google!"); // ideally, i'd like to say this though... // echo a (["href" => "http://www.google.com/", "target" => "_blank"], "Visit Google!"); // what also doesn't work // echo a (array("href" => "http://www.google.com/", "target" => "_blank"), "Visit Google!"); echo "\n\n"; // another example echo a ($attrs = array ("href" => "http://www.google.com/"),

        img ($attrs = array (
            "src" => "http://www.google.com/images/title_homepage4.gif",
            "alt" => "Visit Google!",
            "border" => "0")
        )

); /* now ideally, this could be written much more cleanly, perhaps... echo a(['href' => [http://www.google.com/'],

        img(['src' => 'http://www.google.com/images/title_homepage4.gif', 'alt' => 'Visit Google!', 'border' => '0'])

); */ ?> -- John Luxford Simian Systems w: www.simian.ca e: lux@simian.ca p: 204.946.5955 --