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php

return NULL by reference

php.internals

Jeffrey Moss

21 years ago

I can't seem to reproduce this bug, I was wondering if anyone has any input they could give me....

I wrote a function to return a parameter by reference that worked with PHP5.0 RC1, looks like this:

function & getParameter ($name)
{
if (isset($this->params[$name]))
{
return $this->params[$name];
}
return NULL;
}

Now I recently upgraded to PHP5.0.2 and I get errors. I have tried to make a test case script to demonstrate it but it works fine in command line. My cgi script is huge, so I can't tell you how to reproduce it, but it's giving me this error:  "Only variable references should be returned by reference " on the line with "return NULL;".

Could this be related to another bug? The code works fine if I replace "return NULL" with anything else, even "return $nonexistant->variable;". Is there a way I can turn this check off?

-Jeff Moss

Daniel Convissor

21 years ago

On Mon, Sep 27, 2004 at 11:52:24AM -0600, Jeffrey Moss wrote:

>         return NULL;

... snip ...

> "Only variable references should be returned by reference "

Just like the error message says.  "References" are referring to
variables.  NULL isn't a variable.  Do this instead:

$tmp = null;
return $tmp;

--Dan

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Jeffrey Moss

21 years ago

Well I can't reliably reproduce it, is this expected behavior or not? If
there is a cleaner solution I'd like to try that first.

I'd like to turn off this error altogether even if I have to patch and
recompile. I can't see anything like this in the changelogs. Since when
should anything not be allowed to return null?

-Jeff

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Convissor" <danielc@analysisandsolutions.com>
To: "Jeffrey Moss" <jeff@opendbms.com>
Cc: <internals@lists.php.net>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 12:04 PM
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] return NULL by reference

Lukas Smith

21 years ago

Daniel Convissor wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 27, 2004 at 11:52:24AM -0600, Jeffrey Moss wrote:
>
>
>>        return NULL;
>
> ... snip ...
>
>>"Only variable references should be returned by reference "
>
>
> Just like the error message says.  "References" are referring to
> variables.  NULL isn't a variable.  Do this instead:
>
>           $tmp = null;
>           return $tmp;

i thought that one was fixed?

regards,
Lukas

Derick Rethans

21 years ago

On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Daniel Convissor wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 27, 2004 at 11:52:24AM -0600, Jeffrey Moss wrote:
>
> >         return NULL;
> ... snip ...
> > "Only variable references should be returned by reference "
>
> Just like the error message says.  "References" are referring to
> variables.  NULL isn't a variable.  Do this instead:
>
>           $tmp = null;
>           return $tmp;

Although this is a totally stupid thing to do.

Derick