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PHP Manual for

What References Are Not

As said before, references aren't pointers. That means, the following construct won't do what you expect:


<?php
function foo (&$var)
{
    $var =& $GLOBALS["baz"];
}
foo($bar); 
?>

What happens is that $var infoo will be bound with$bar in caller, but then it will be re-bound with $GLOBALS["baz"]. There's no way to bind $bar in the calling scope to something else using the reference mechanism, since $bar is not available in the function foo (it is represented by$var, but $var has only variable contents and not name-to-value binding in the calling symbol table).