David Harkness wrote:
> Ah, so assigning a reference to a variable already holding a reference
> changes that variable's reference only in the same way that unsetting a
> reference doesn't unset the other variables referencing the same thing, yes?
>
> $a = 5;
> $b = &$a;
> print $a;
>> 5
> unset($b); // does not affect $a
> print $a;
>> 5
>
> // and according to Mike's previous message
> $b = &$a;
> $c = 10;
> $b = &$c; // does not affect $a
> print $a
>> 5
>
> That makes a lot of sense. If it didn't work this way there would be no easy
> way to untangle references. In the case of
>
> foreach($array as $key => &$value) { ... }
>
> the first value in the array would continuously be overwritten by the next
> value.
>
> 1. $value gets reference to first array value
> 2. on each step through the loop, the first array value would be overwritten
> by the next value in the loop since $value is forever tied to it by the
> initial reference assignment.
>
> That would be a Bad Thing (tm).
>
> Thanks for the clarification, Mike.
>
> David
>
The big "aha" moment for was when realizing that when assigning a
reference to a variable you only change its reference and not any other
variable that may also have shared the same reference. Yuck that's a
mouth full. This happened when Mike said, " NOTE: since we are
assigning a new reference to a variable which is already a reference,
ONLY this reference changes".
Yes, i agree with you David (on both of your points). Thanks for the
example using the unset. This further clarified/solidified my
understanding.
Now, with this new understanding, I also wish to comment that if i
assign (without reference) $this, i don't have to be too worried about
bloating the memory, b/c i'm only assigning/copying the identifer or
*handle* and not the actual object itself.
In case, someone reads this in the archive the link is:
http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.references.php
Mike, thank you a ton.
Regards.
`
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