What is =& in PHP?

Question

Look at this example. There is a line:

  $client =& new xmlrpc_client(\'/xml-rpc\', \'api.quicktate.com\', 80);
  $client->return_type = \'xmlrpcvals         


        

Answer 1

The =& assigns the variable a reference to the object rather than copying it. It is two separate operators (assignment and getting a reference) but they are often written together.

The -> is a member access operator; in the example it means to get the return_type that belongs to the XML-RPC client.