RE: foreach weirdness

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From: Simon Schick [mailto:simonsimcity@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: 24 March 2012 12:30 AM
To: Robert Cummings
Cc: arno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; php-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re:  foreach weirdness

2012/3/23 Robert Cummings <robert@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> On 12-03-23 11:16 AM, Arno Kuhl wrote:
>>
>>
>> it still does not produce the correct result:
>> 0 1 3 6 10 15 21
>> 0 1 3 6 10 15 15
>
>
> This looks like a bug... the last row should be the same. What version 
> of PHP are you using? Have you checked the online bug reports?
>
>

Hi, Robert

Does not seem like a bug to me ...
http://schlueters.de/blog/archives/141-References-and-foreach.html

What you should do to get the expected result:
Unset the variable after you don't need this reference any longer.

Bye
Simon

--

Hi Simon, unsetting the $value does fix the problem, but I found that any time you assign $value by reference in a foreach loop you have to do an unset to avoid corrupting the array unless you continue to assign $value by reference (as illustrated in the article you linked).
 
So doing something as simple as:
$array = array(0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6);
foreach ($array as $key=>&$value) {
	echo "Key: $key; Value: $value<br />\n";
}

and then follow with (from the php manual):
foreach ($array as $key=>$value) {
	echo "Key: $key; Value: $value<br />\n";
}

will not only give the wrong result, it will corrupt the array for *any* further use of that array. I still think it’s a bug according to the definition of foreach in the php manual. Maybe php needs to do an implicit unset at the closing brace of the foreach where was an assign $value by reference, to remove the reference to the last element (or whatever element it was pointing to if there was a break) so that it doesn't corrupt the array, because any assign to $value after the foreach loop is completed will corrupt the array (confirmed by testing). The average user (like me) wouldn't think twice about reusing $value after ending the foreach loop, not realising that without an unset the array will be corrupted.

BTW thanks for that reference, it was quite an eye-opener on the pitfalls of using assign by reference, not only in the foreach loop.

Cheers
Arno


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