[SOLVED] What is the purpose of using .= and =& ??

[ridiculous]

I'm trying to learn OO PHP and I'm seeing a lot of code snippets on PHP.net that include .=  and =& . I've searched these terms on GOOGLE and YAHOO! with little success. Can anyone fill me in?

 

Thanks.

[JasonLewis]

You can use them to join two strings together. I don't use =& but I'm positive it does the same thing. Example:

 

$str = "Hello this is a string";
$str .= " that will be joined!";

echo $str;

[ridiculous]

Awesome. So its essentially a shorter way of going:

 

$str = "This is";

$str = $str."some text";

[JasonLewis]

Sure is.

[ridiculous]

Thanks a lot for the help!

[DarkWater]

Precisely.  Just like +=, -=, *=, and /=.  Where did you see =&?  That's not a shorthand operator.  Did you see something like:

 

$var = & new someClass();

 

>_>

[ridiculous]

Example #6 Object Assignment

 

<?php

$assigned  =  $instance;

$reference  =& $instance;

 

$instance->var = '$assigned will have this value';

 

$instance = null; // $instance and $reference become null

 

var_dump($instance);

var_dump($reference);

var_dump($assigned);

?>

 

http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.basic.php

[DarkWater]

Yeah, it's the reference operator.  It's not a shorthand thing.  You use it to make a variable a reference to another object so changes to either affect both variables sort of.  Almost like C++ pointers, but not quite. =P