PHP's =& operator

Question

Are both these PHP statements doing the same thing?:

$o =& $thing;  $o = &$thing; 

Answer 1

Yes, they are both the exact same thing. They just take the reference of the object and reference it within the variable $o. Please note, thing should be variables.

Answer 2

They're not the same thing, syntactically speaking. The operator is the atomic =& and this actually matters. For instance you can't use the =& operator in a ternary expression. Neither of the following are valid syntax:

$f = isset($field[0]) ? &$field[0] : &$field; $f =& isset($field[0]) ? $field[0] : $field; 

So instead you would use this:

isset($field[0]) ? $f =& $field[0] : $f =& $field;