Well I have no real clue as to why this is, but i suspect it might have something to do with how the assignment is evaluated/processed. For fun I tried this and it resulted in another incorrect behaviour:
$arr = array('A', 'B', 'C', 'D');
function itm($val) {
return current($val);
}
foreach ($arr as $item) {
print itm($arr);
}
Result: BCDA
So my guess is that whats happening here is that the function call forces the evaluation of current to happen in a ~correct manner. Also the reason for me getting BCDA instead of ABCD is probably because the internal pointer at first is incremented (pointing at B) and then in the en it is reset back to point at A.
It might be worth noting this line in the PHP doc:
Note that the assignment copies the original variable to the new one (assignment by value), so changes to one will not affect the other. This may also have relevance if you need to copy something like a large array inside a tight loop.
I guess this doesn't really count as an answer but I liked your question and wanted to contribute a little.
