assigning by reference to a global doesn't work

This script does not work as I would expect... is this appropriate behavior? if I change $bar to $GLOBALS["bar"] it assigns the reference to $bar outside of the function. This is a oversimplified (but that's the way you like it) example of what I am trying to do, except for the fact that I am trying to use objects, but the results are the same. This is latest CVS from February 6, 2000 on RedHat 6.1 Apache 1.3.11 as DSO. <?php $bar = "foo"; function bar($str) { global $bar; $bar = &$str; } foo("bar"); print($bar); // prints foo ?> Thanks in advance! -jade jmeskill@libertydistribution.com