note 58222 deleted from language.references.arent by googleguy

Note Submitter: DanielSan88 ---- I can see why there is a big debate on this. I'm hoping this will clarify it a little. In PHP, as far as I can understand, when you assign a variable in the first place, that variable is a refrence to the value that the variable contains. <?php $var = "String"; // Creates the string "String" somewhere in memory. echo $var; /* When the echo function is called, it pulls the value of $var out of memory from wherever PHP decided to put it. PHP then ships this value off to your standard output. */ ?> Anyway, when you create a reference to the variable $var, it doesn't reference the variable's name, but rather its contents. For example: <?php $var2 = & $var; echo $var2; /* Calling this echo does ecactly the same thing as the echo in the code snippet above this one. Whether you echo $var or $var2, the same string in memory is sent to your standard output. */ ?> In the same sense of an array, $var and $var2 are like keys to the same value. The value being the string in memory. When you call a function that uses a reference, the reference is not less than the variable given as the argument, or anything more than it. It is that same variable except with a different name.