＆variablename PHP [重复]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Reference - What does this symbol mean in PHP?

Can anyone explain this experssion

&variablename in PHP.

I have seen this around at many places but i am not able to figure out what does this statement do.

Thanks in advance

J

Answer 1

PHP reference. References in PHP are a means to access the same variable content by different names. There are three operations performed using references: assigning by reference, passing by reference, and returning by reference.

PHP reference

for example:

$example1 =  'something';
$example2 =& $example1;
echo("example 1: $example1 | example 2: $example2
"); //example 1: something | example 2: something
$example1 = 'nothing'; //change example 1 to nothing
echo("example 1: $example1 | example 2: $example2"); //example 1: nothing | example 2: nothing