Lester Caine wrote:
I suppose the REAL questions was - "Why was using the function in this
way a 'bad practice', is there any way that it could be made a 'good
practice' since the intent is so obvious?"
I understand the new checks, but I don't see that the original was
particularly 'bad' - only that under some conditions it might cause a
problem?
Basically, in PHP, a reference (such as what key() takes as a parameter
[1]) can only point to an actual variable, not directly to the result of
a function. So you have to assign the output of the function to a
variable first.
From the PHP manual [2]:
| the following examples of passing by reference are invalid:
|
| foo(bar()); // Produces fatal error since PHP 5.1.0
| foo($a = 5); // Expression, not variable
| foo(5); // Produces fatal error
Whether this is the optimal behaviour has been the subject of recent
debate on this list [3]. Rasmus states that the current behaviour of
throwing a fatal error will be changed to a notice.
[1] http://php.net/key
[2] http://php.net/language.references.pass
[3] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-general&m=112689425109173&w=2
--
Jasper Bryant-Greene
Freelance web developer
http://jasper.bryant-greene.name/
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