PHP equals and operators

Question

Possible Duplicates:
Reference - What does this symbol mean in PHP?
what do “=&” / “&=” operators in php mean?

Sorry guys I feel like I'm asking too simple of a question but what is =& in PHP? I tried to use this group function with ACL in Cakephp...

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 14 '11 at 17:52

4

You use =& when you want to assign a variable by reference. For more information see http://php.net/manual/en/language.references.php.

Example:

$a = array(1, 2, 3);
// $b is a reference to $a.
// If you change $a or $b, the value for both $a and $b will be changed.
$b =& $a;

$c = array(1, 2, 3);
// $d is a copy of $c.
// If you change $d, $c remains unchanged.
$d = $c;

answered Jul 14 '11 at 17:52

Francois Deschenes

23,823
3
61
58

So this would be similar to $$ variable variable? – Passionate Engineer Jul 14 '11 at 18:11
@Jae Choi - No. The only time you'd want to use `$$` is if you want to dynamically refer to a variable. For instance: `$variable = 'test';` you could do `$$variable` and PHP would interpret it at `$test` (it replaces the `$variable` with it's value) but I wouldn't recommend coding that way. It'll make your code extremely difficult to read. – Francois Deschenes Jul 14 '11 at 18:13

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 14 '11 at 17:54

0

$b = 3;
$a =& $b;
$b = 5; //$a is 5 now
$a = 7; //$b is 7 now

answered Jul 14 '11 at 17:54

RiaD

42,649
10
67
110

PHP equals and operators

2 Answers2