note 46744 added to function.func-get-arg

I've always wants a deferment or cascade operator so that I could use this expression: $a = $b ## $c ## $d; and everything to the right of the assignment operator would evaluate to the left-most value that is not null. It is essentially a collapsed version of this: if ($b) { $a=$b; } else { if($c) { $a=$c; } else { if ($d) { $a = $d; } else { $a = null; } } } In leiu of this, I'm trying to make a function that takes a variable number of arguments and returns the first that is not null. I wan't to use this on some large-ish arrays, so I'd like to pass these by reference. However, call-time reference passing is disabled (and should be, imo) in newer versions of PHP. I'd like suggestions on how to pass both references and values to this function. The only solution I can think of is setting variables to the reference of the array first. e.g. $a = array( ... ); $b = 0; $c = &a; first_not_null($a, $b); Does anyone know a better solution? ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.func-get-arg.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+46744 Delete -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+46744&report=yes Reason: bad code -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+46744&report=yes&reason=bad+code Reason: spam -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+46744&report=yes&reason=spam Reason: useless example -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+46744&report=yes&reason=useless+example Reason: contains commercial links -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+46744&report=yes&reason=contains+commercial+links Reason: useless note -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+46744&report=yes&reason=useless+note Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+46744&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php