What References Are Not

What References Are Not

As said before, references are not 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  in
 will be bound with
 in the caller, but then
re-bound with . There's no way
to bind  in the calling scope to something else
using the reference mechanism, since  is not
available in the function  (it is represented by
, but  has only
variable contents and not name-to-value binding in the calling
).
You can use  to reference variables selected by the function.

$var``foo``$bar``$GLOBALS["baz"]``$bar``$bar``foo``$var``$varsymbol tablereturning references