Resources and assigning by reference

stephen_curran

Hi,

I am currently reading the PHP manual on this site. I'm having a bit of trouble understanding something and was hoping someone could help me out.

In the manual they state that resources are reference types. They also state that a mysql link is a resource. The mysql_connect() function returns a mysql link. Therefore why is it not required, when getting one of these mysql links, that you assign by reference?

$conn &= mysql_connect($host, $user, $pwd);

as opposed to

$conn = mysql_connect($host, $user, $pwd);

Thanks in advance,
Stephen.

stephen_curran

Sorry, a syntax error. It should be =& as opposed to &= in the first statement.

laserlight

Read up more on PHP references as well.

In fact, you dont even need to explicitly assign the resource to a variable, unless you have more than 1 concurrent open connection.

stephen_curran

Thanks for your reply. I've read the reference section. I think I understand whats going on.

When you state

$conn = mysql_connect($host, $user, $pwd);

the reference to the link resource is copied into the contents of the variable $conn?