Fatal error: Cannot assign by reference to overloaded object?

**Leeoniya** · Jun 8th, 2011, 05:02 PM

hi peoples,

anyone know why this throws a fatal error?

PHP Code:


class MyArrayObject extends ArrayObject {};
$obj = new MyArrayObject;
$moo = 'moo';
$obj['myVar'] = &$moo

Code:

Fatal error: Cannot assign by reference to overloaded object in...

but this works fine

PHP Code:


class MyArrayObject extends ArrayObject {};
$moo = 'moo';
$obj = new MyArrayObject(array('myVar' => &$moo));

thanks,
leon

**Fou-Lu** · Jun 8th, 2011, 06:16 PM

That would be the ArrayAccess offsetSet method. ArrayAccess does not slate any returned by reference or parameter by reference methods.
5.3.4 appears to have fixed the issues with the byref, so you may use version 5.3.4 or higher. It appears they have simply relaxed the prototype to it so that you can override with a slightly different signature in order to force the references.

**Leeoniya** · Jun 8th, 2011, 06:27 PM

nice digging, thanks!

**Leeoniya** · Jun 8th, 2011, 07:11 PM

well, i updated to 5.3.6 and not much luck.

here's what i have now

Code:

class MyArrayObject extends ArrayObject
{
	public function &offsetGet($key) {
		return parent::offsetGet($key);
	}
}

Code:

Notice: Indirect modification of overloaded element of MyArrayObject has no effect in...

Fatal error: Cannot assign by reference to overloaded object in...

should i not be using "parent::offsetGet"? i think there is a private "$storage" variable that holds the actual array in the parent, can i somehow use that directly?

**Leeoniya** · Jun 8th, 2011, 07:18 PM

oh boy

http://www.mail-archive.com/php-bugs...msg144279.html

#wtfphp

**Fou-Lu** · Jun 8th, 2011, 07:35 PM

I haven't seen anything quite yet in regards to the ArrayObject whether it were fixed, just the ArrayAccess. Its possible that the interface alone has been relaxed, but since classes themselves are not this may not work as expected.
Try constructing a simple Vector or LinkedList class manually, and apply the ArrayAccess to it allowing both byref return and byref parameters. If it works, that would indicate that ArrayObject still cannot be overridden. There is a suggestion made to return an ArrayObject itself by one of the PHP team members, but I'm afraid I didn't read it with the remaining context.

**Leeoniya** · Jun 8th, 2011, 07:51 PM

this is for the internal storage of a linq-ish lib i plan to open-source, so i can't reasonably require 5.3.4+

looks like i'll just use a plain array internally and implement ArrayAccess + IteratorAggregate on the container with a custom iterator as a work-around.

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