Date: 05/12/05 (PHP Community)    Keywords: php

In PHP 5, say I pass a newly-created array to a function, like this:

function foo($a) { }
foo(array("one" => 1, "two" => 2, "three" => 3));

Does that cause the array to be created, then copied unnecessarily when it's passed to the function, or is PHP smart about it? I know I can do it the following way instead, to ensure that it's not copied:

function foo(&$a) { }
$bar = array("one" => 1, "two" => 2, "three" => 3);
foo($bar);

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/php/298532.html