PHP Classes

Hi! Sorry to bother you, but I didn't find the right contact information on the php.net website so could you please forward this to the right person. Thanx. I have a request that the behaviour of the "new" operator should be changed in future PHP versions so that it would *not* return a *copy* by default, but a *reference*. Reasons: 1) Currently "new" returns a copy of the object it created. This is not wanted behaviour (I can't imagine why it would be necessary at all, anywhere). PHP's class support is weak overall, but I think this is the biggest problem. 2) Of course, it can be overcome by using "& new", BUT programmers WILL NOT remember that. I was working in a team to create re-usable PHP components for developing web sites and in the design phase where some coding was done already I stressed many times that "& new" should be used to create objects, but even the lead programmer didn't remember that (he is more of a Java programmer) and I had to fix his code in many places. 3) For most users, it is probably not relevant at all how many copies of one object are there, but if you want to use classes for more than just containers of variables and functions, it may become very important that only a single copy of an object exists, especially so when you want to store an external reference to the object in its constructor. For these reasons I think you should seriously consider making the "new" operator returning a reference by default. Considering how widely PHP is used and how accessible it is, I think that most PHP programmers will not read that bit explaining classes & references in the manual or will not remember to use it. And those who haven't read it have no reason to think that the new operator makes a copy by default, because that just doesn't make sense and is not used in any other languages as far as I know. Erkki Lindpere PHP programmer/database designer/OO minded person :)