note 34306 deleted from language.references.whatdo by sniper

Note Submitter: agatesystems@yahoo.com ---- Re: ampersands in function definitions There is a prior comment that "in practice you won't need ampersands in function definitions." This is not really true; ampersands in function definitions *do* change the way PHP behaves. I have an application that has an array of "references to objects". A function that wants to return a reference to an object requires the "function &foo()" notation. If the ampersand is missing, a copy of the object is made, regardless if the invocation is "$obj = foo()" or "$obj =& foo()". For many applications, the difference between "function &foo()" and "function foo()" won't be apparent, simply because return by value is the correct behavior.