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Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2017 14:45:23 +0100
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To: =?UTF-8?Q?Johannes_Schl=C3=BCter?= <johannes@schlueters.de>
Cc: Stanislav Malyshev <smalyshev@gmail.com>, PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Explicit call-site send-by-ref syntax
From: nikita.ppv@gmail.com (Nikita Popov)

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On Tue, Dec 12, 2017 at 8:43 AM, Johannes Schl=C3=BCter <johannes@schlueter=
s.de>
wrote:

>
>
> On December 12, 2017 7:38:54 AM GMT+01:00, Stanislav Malyshev <
> smalyshev@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Hi!
> >
> >> I would rather discourage usage of references. Since PHP 7 the cost
> >of
> >> breaking cow isn't as expensive anymore, but receiving values by
> >value
> >> and returning by value is more idiomatic imo. Using objects can be
> >more
> >> efficient.
> >
> >Objects are kind of overkill when you just need a modifyable array. And
> >copying an array when you just need to add one value to a K-size array
> >is still not a good idea for many apps. O(n) vs O(n^2) still matters.
> >One should definitely be careful not to overuse refs, but there are
> >still valid cases for using them.
>
> The issue, as you well know, is that references disable copy-on-write.
> Thus assume you have code like this:
>
> function with_ref(&$a) {
>    count ($a);
> }
>
> function no_ref($a) {
>   count($a);
> }
>
> The count in with_ref() will copy the array, while no_ref() can use copy
> on write and won't actually copy.


This is no longer the case as of PHP 7. PHP 7 can share values between
references and non-references.

Nikita

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