Throughout the PHP manual, and normal code, one finds this construct:
$var = array( ... );
However, as far as I can tell this is quite inefficient, since it
always means two arrays are being created. The right-side array is
created, and then copied to the left-side variable.
Thus one would expect the normal syntax should be:
$var =& array( ... );
But this is not used in the manual very often.
So, is there some kind of magic on the first array assignment such that
it is done by reference (the first time)? Or are the vast majority of
examples of array creation in the manual (and most PHP code)
inefficient?