note 106342 deleted from language.references.unset by danbrown

Note Submitter: Peter ---- The claim that unset does not work on objects does not appear to be correct to me (lowlight 20 Sep 11) as the following code shows: $a = new stdclass(); $a->something = true; unset($a); var_dump($a); // $a is now undefined as one would expect. I think that there is a problem with the code given in the previous post: function test(&$trash) { unset($trash); } $a = new stdclass(); $a->something = true; test($a); var_dump($a); // $a is still defined (and unchanged). My best understanding (guess?) of why the unset in the function call does not work is that the 'unset($trash)' line unbinds the $trash parameter from $a in much the same way that the test_rebind function (below) would remove the binding between $trash and $a and replace it with a binding to $GLOBALS and not cause a binding between $a and $GLOBALS. function test_rebind(&$trash) { $trash = $GLOBALS; } An additional comment on the nuke_me function presented is that the object property 'something' is unset but the object '$a' is still defined which, I presume, was not the intention of the code.