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Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2019 19:36:16 +0000
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC: Locked Classes
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

On 10/03/2019 18:56, Gabriel O wrote:
> Isn’t unset() currently only way to remove reference? This part is hence very problematic.


Hm, that's an interesting case to consider, thanks!

At the moment, the following code breaks the reference between $a->foo 
and $bar, but also deletes the entire property from the instance:

class A { public $foo; }
$a = new A;
$a->foo =& $bar;
unset($a->foo);
var_dump($a->foo); # Notice: Undefined property: A::$foo

This feels very peculiar to me: $foo clearly *is* a defined property, 
and I didn't want to over-ride the class definition, I just wanted to 
"reset" that property. We can chalk it up to "references are bad", but 
it is indeed problematic that there isn't an alternative way to say 
"breakReference($a->foo);" that doesn't have this side effect.

Regards,

-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]