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Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 08:48:34 +1000
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Subject: Reference handling change and PHP 4.4.0
From: colin@encode.net.au (Colin Tucker)

Hello all,

I know this issue has most likely been discussed to death here so I 
apologise in advance for starting a new thread about it.  I just need to 
get my head around the reasoning for introducing this change to PHP4 
(4.4 branch).  I can understand making the change to PHP5, but can 
someone bring me up to speed as to why it was done to PHP4?  As I'm sure 
you're aware, it breaks heaps and heaps of existing code out there.

We found this out the hard way yesterday when our server administrator 
upgraded our production server to PHP 4.4.0 (even though the Debian 
package description said it was a PHP 4.3.x release).  We ended up with 
hundreds of errors and many, many vhosts stopped working correctly due 
to "variable references should be returned by reference" problems, both 
in my code and in third-party code, such as PHPBB instances.

And now I read that this will not be "fixed" in future PHP4 releases due 
to breaking backwards compatibility?  I just don't understand... a 
change that breaks backwards compatibility in a large portion of the 
existing PHP4 code base will not be fixed because it breaks backwards 
compatibility?  It's doing my head in, please can someone explain?

This means that either we have to (potentially) change thousands of 
lines of code and upgrade many instances of third-party PHP-based sites 
just to use PHP 4.4.0 and above, or miss out on using this and future 
PHP4 releases and any security vulnerability fixes they may include. 
Why could the change not be made optional by using a php.ini directive?

Kind regards,

Colin.