On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 12:41, Jordi Canals wrote: > Hi all, > > It is not a big issue, but that is something that I never had clear. > I've been looking at the manual and found no answer, so I will ask with > an example: > > When instantiating an object, I could do it in two different ways: > > A) $object = new MyClass; > B) $object =& new MyClass; > > I cannot understand the exect difference betwen the two methods. Because > there is not yet an object, the second example does not return a > reference to an existing object. > > I think perhaps the diference is: > > 1) In case A, PHP creates a new object and returns a Copy of this new > object, so really I will have the object two instances for the object in > memory ... Only until the garbage collection cleans up the "first" instance. So you _always_ create one instance for the garbage collector only. > > 2) In case B, PHP creates a noew object and returns a reference to this > newly created object. In this case there is only one instance of the object. > > Does it works that way? If not, What is exactly the difference? It is as you say. The problem is normally negligible, but makes a big difference if there is alot done in the constructor of the object (e.g. scanning a huge file for certain strings). Then this will slow things down. This however is solved in PHP5. > > TIA, > Jordi. Cheerio /rudy
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