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Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:50:24 +0100
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Subject: Proposal: Implement FR #7930 (list() constructor reference assignment)
From: ajf@ajf.me (Andrea Faulds)

Good evening everyone,

I have a simple suggestion for a feature addition, which I have already 
implemented. Over 13 years ago, someone suggested adding support for 
assigning by reference in list(), with the following syntax:

     $arr = [1, 2]
     list(&$a, $b) = $arr;

Which would be equivalent to:

     $a = &$arr[0];
     $b = $arr[2];

Their request is here: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=6768

It seemed like a useful feature, so I implemented it. The syntax is a 
little unusual, in that normally you do $a = &$b, and with list() you'd 
do list(&$a) = [$b], but I don't think there's a better syntax for it 
that allows you to set some variables as references, but not all.

The patch is here: 
https://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/php-src/compare/ListByReference

If people think it is useful, I'll write an RFC soon.

Thanks,
-- 
Andrea Faulds
http://ajf.me/