When to pass-by-reference in PHP

Question

Im wondering if its good practice to pass-by-reference when you are only reading a variable, or if it should always be passed as a value.

Example with pass-by-refere

Answer 1

The joy of micro-optimisation. :-)

To be honest, there's probably not a great deal to be gained by passing 'normal' variables by reference (unless you want to affect their value in their original scope). Also, since PHP 5 objects are automatically passed by reference.