Re: Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] DB-1.7.13 (stable) Released.

On 9/23/07, Craig Constantine <cconstantine@php.net> wrote: > --On September 21, 2007 Sep 21, 15:16.43 +0000 PEAR Announce > <pear-dev@lists.php.net> wrote: > > > * Replaced instances of '=& new Foo' with '= new Foo' to make DB > > (slightly) > > more E_STRICT friendly. Request 11581. > > All, > > Could someone hit me with the clue-bat on this. just send me off to rtfm if > this is explained clearly in one spot. :) > > I know that "$x =& new Foo()" is 'out' in php5. > > but in PHP4, the "$x =& new Foo" construct used to make a new Foo instance, > then make $x refer to that instance. And "$x = new Foo" use to make a new Foo, > then make $x be a *copy* of that new Foo. I have this vague recollection of > falling over this in some project. I had used the "$x = new Foo" contruct and > took me a while to discover there were really two Foo instances in that one > line of code. When I changed to =& my problem was resolved. So I dutifully > started "=& new" all my objects in php4 > This is exactly why I have always used =& in my PHP4 code. You can introduce subtle bugs if you don't use it, such as if, in the constructor, a reference to the object that is being instantiated is stored somewhere (such as in a sub-class). Various PEAR classes *will* break if code is changed to use = rather than =&. > so my questions: > > - is my understanding above, in php4 context, correct? (I have legacty code to > maintain ya know.) > > - and how does "$x = new Foo" work in php5? does it 'just work correctly' > thus > we no longer needed the "$x =& new Foo" from php4. > -- Justin Patrin