Ternary operator not working with reference variables in PHP [closed]

Question

Why isn't this working?

$a = 'FOO';

$foo = $a ? &$a : 'whatever'; // <- error here

echo $foo;

I get a parse error :|

Answer 1

If you want to assign a reference using a ternary statement, then you need this clumsy workaround:

 list($foo) = $a ? array(&$a) : array('whatever');

However, as said in the other answers, this seldomly saves memory.