Posted by kenneth02394832 on 09/28/07 09:14

On Sep 27, 11:59 pm, Lars Eighner <use...@larseighner.com> wrote:
> In our last episode, <1190961700.418756.41...@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com>,
> the lovely and talented Summercool broadcast on comp.lang.php:
>
> > so many places, including the book PHP in a Nutshell, p. 80, it says:
> > $a =& $b # set $a to reference $b
> > if $a reference $b, then while you can say $b =1, you can't really
> > say $a = 1. you need to say *($a) = 1 as in C or C++. Referencing
> > must be coupled with dereferencing, and PHP is not doing the
> > dereferencing, so why is it call referencing in the first place?
> > (don't tell me PHP automatically dereference... as it will be really
> > weird).
> > and i think in the PHP group, people say "reference" to mean "alias".
>
> That is exactly what the manual says in Chapter 21. References Explained.
> Instead of guessing, why not RTFM?


does the manual say why there are two different types of references
and
they behaving differently and they just call it the same name?

in all the languages i know, when you use

a = 0
b = 1

that will break any relationship for variable a and b

no, not for PHP. if there was ever a line

$a =& $b

some where before, then they are alias forever. No other language i
know does that, and then calling it reference to confuse with the
other type of reference.

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