Re: RFC proposal

On 2 June 2017 18:21:34 BST, Levi Morrison <levim@php.net> wrote: >On Fri, Jun 2, 2017 at 11:12 AM, Michael Morris <tendoaki@gmail.com> >wrote: >> What about foreach by reference, which is honestly the only time I >use >> referencing anymore... >> >> foreach ($array as $key => &$value) { >> $value = someOp($value); >> } >> >> Is this also bad? > >I'm not going to say "bad" but I would not personally write it that >way. If the memory cost is too high to duplicate then ... The times I've used foreach-by-reference have absolutely nothing to do with memory cost. Mostly, they're situations where explicitly writing back into the original array would be tediously long-winded, like this: $some_array[$some_outer_key][$loop_key]['foo'] = some_func($loop_value['foo']); $some_array[$some_outer_key][$loop_key]['bar'] = some_other_func($loop_value['bar'], true); Granted, there are probably major refactorings that would be in some way better, but changing $loop_value to a reference gives the much more readable: $loop_value['foo'] = some_func($loop_value['foo']); $loop_value['bar'] = some_other_func($loop_value['bar'], true); References are fiddly, but they do have their uses. Short of eliminating mutability, per functional programming, I think they'll always have their place, in some form. Regards, -- Rowan Collins [IMSoP]