zval "passthrough"?

Hello I'm writing a PHP extension in C++ which need to provide a function which will take as a parameter a zval *. This zval * should, when the function has completed its task, simply be returned unmodified. How do I accomplish this? I've tried something like this: PHP_FUNCTION(my_func) { zval *v; if(zend_parse_parameters(ZEND_NUM_ARGS() TSRMLS_CC, "z", &v) == FAILURE) { WRONG_PARAM_COUNT; } . . . return_value = v; } The above doesn't seem to be working at all though. Any ideas? I guess it is a really simple task once you known how do actually do it... :-) Thankful for all help! David Olsson