help with passing a null argument as reference, please

[Allan Rydberg]

please help! does anyone know the proper way to pass null as an
argument to a function that expects a reference?
i have a function that receives an object and attaches it to
another object in a hierarchical node-like fashion. it returns the
new node:

$level5 =& $myNodes->addObj($level4, $data);

all works fine, but for the case of the top level node, where i'd like
to pass 'null' or 'no object' as the node to attach to:

$level0 =& $myNodes->addObj('', $data);

the function addObj() knows what to do in that case, but my problem is
that i cannot pass 'null', because that's not a reference and throws
[Cannot pass parameter 1 by reference in...]. how can i get around that?
i read that i could to

$dummy = null;
$level1 =& $myNodes->addObj($dummy, $data);

but that's far from elegant. is there any other way to handle this? i
searched, but couldn't really find a proper solution to this. pre-4.3.6
i was actually able to do it with a Call-time-pass-by-reference as

$level5 =& $myNodes->addObj(& $level4, $data);
$level0 =& $myNodes->addObj('', $data);

which worked beautifully but is deprecated.... [grrrr]
any hint is appreciated!!!!

[Andrew]

Allan Rydberg wrote:

please help! does anyone know the proper way to pass null as an
argument to a function that expects a reference?
i have a function that receives an object and attaches it to
another object in a hierarchical node-like fashion. it returns the
new node:

$level5 =& $myNodes->addObj($level4, $data);

all works fine, but for the case of the top level node, where i'd like
to pass 'null' or 'no object' as the node to attach to:

$level0 =& $myNodes->addObj('', $data);

$level0 =& $myNodes->addObj(NULL, $data);

--
Andrew @ Rockface
np: (Winamp is not active ;-)
www.rockface-records.co.uk

[Allan Rydberg]

no! NULL itself cannot be interpreted as a REFERENCE[!!!] and you'd
get: [Fatal error: Cannot pass parameter 1 by reference...]
that's the whole point....

and if you try this at home, use the4 following to be fully
compliant:

function &addObj(& $obj,$data){
#----------^ !!!!!
...
...
return $some_new_obj;
}

Andrew @ Rockface wrote:

Allan Rydberg wrote:

please help! does anyone know the proper way to pass null as an
argument to a function that expects a reference?
i have a function that receives an object and attaches it to
another object in a hierarchical node-like fashion. it returns the
new node:

$level5 =& $myNodes->addObj($level4, $data);

all works fine, but for the case of the top level node, where i'd like
to pass 'null' or 'no object' as the node to attach to:

$level0 =& $myNodes->addObj('', $data);

$level0 =& $myNodes->addObj(NULL, $data);

[Andrew]

Allan Rydberg wrote:

no! NULL itself cannot be interpreted as a REFERENCE[!!!] and you'd
get: [Fatal error: Cannot pass parameter 1 by reference...]
that's the whole point....

and if you try this at home, use the4 following to be fully
compliant:

function &addObj(& $obj,$data){
#----------^ !!!!!
...
...
return $some_new_obj;
}

Sorry, I missed the part about 'reference'.
You're right and I have no idea how to get around a function expecting a ref
and getting a NULL.

--
Andrew @ Rockface
np: (Winamp is not active ;-)
www.rockface-records.co.uk