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[nycphp-talk] Passing Arrays

George Webb gw.nyphp at gwprogramming.com
Tue Oct 28 15:08:37 EST 2003


Hi all.  Just another too sense:

	In case it's not already obvious, PHP doesn't "flatten"
multiple arrays into a single array in a function argument list.
E.g. you can send three different arrays to a function and they
will each remain independent.

	Regarding passing references versus values for arguments,
I recall hearing from an expert at last year's PHPCON (West) that
passing references (instead of values) doesn't really save memory.
(David Mintz began saying this already....) I believe this is
because PHP's internal copying of an array is so efficient.  However,
I would assume that this is only true for arrays that are not "huge"...
if you want to pass a "huge" array to a function, I believe it
would be better to pass a reference instead of the regular way.

	What constitutes "huge" is probably hard to determine
exactly.  I would guess maybe an array larger than a megabyte or so.

	Also, you can conveniently specify pass-by-reference in
either the call to the function or in the function's declaration.


Best, George.

George Webb
gw.nyphp at gwprogramming.com



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