note 59562 rejected from language.references by gustavo

Note Submitter: ---- The comparison between unix filenames and the claim that PHP has garbage collection might mislead you into thinking that variable data is kept in memory until it becomes inaccesible by any reference. This would make the code <?php function example() { global $bar; $foo='hello!'; $bar =& $foo; } $bar=''; example(); echo $bar; ?> output 'hello!'. Actually it outputs nothing! That's because the $foo is removed from memory as soon as control leaves the function example(). The global reference $bar then points to an undefined variable. References are thus 'weak', they are not real references, just symbolic aliases. No general-graph based garbage collection is performed.