While trying to do object references with the special $this variable I found that this will not work:
class foo {
function bar() {
...
$this =& $some_other_foo_obj;
}
}
If you want to emulate this functionality you must iterate through the vars of the class and assign references like this:
$vars = get_class_vars('foo');
foreach (array_keys($vars) as $field) {
$this->$field =& $some_other_foo_obj->$field;
}
Now if you modify values within $this they will be modified within $some_other_foo_obj and vice versa.
Hope that helps some people!
p.s.
developer at sirspot dot com's note about object references doesn't seem correct to me.
$temp =& $object;
$object =& $temp->getNext();
Does the same exact thing as:
$object =& $object->getNext();
when you refernce $temp to $object all it does is make $temp an alias to the same memory as $object, so doing $temp->getNext(); and $object->getNext(); are calling the same function on the same object. Try it out if you don't believe me.