PHP's assignment by reference is not working as expected

Question

Why the following

class AClass
{
    public function __construct ()
    {
        $this->prop = \"Hello\";
    }
    public function &get ()
    {
                


        

Answer 1

Just change protected into public for the sake of testing.

$value = new AClass();
$myValue = &$value->get();

var_dump($myValue );
var_dump($value->prop);
$value->prop = 'test';
var_dump($value->prop);
var_dump($myValue );

Output :

 string 'Hello' (length=5)
 string 'Hello' (length=5)
 string 'test' (length=4)
 string 'test' (length=4)

incase you think that function is necessary you can use global variable.