Are there specific best practices for handling references in PHP arrays to avoid unexpected behavior?

When working with references in PHP arrays, it's important to be mindful of potential unexpected behavior, especially when modifying the array. To avoid issues, it's best practice to use the `&` symbol when assigning a reference to an array element. This ensures that changes made to the reference will also affect the original array. 

// Creating a reference to an array element
$array = [1, 2, 3];
$reference =& $array[1];

// Modifying the reference will also affect the original array
$reference = 5;

// Output: [1, 5, 3]
print_r($array);

Keywords

references PHP arrays unexpected behavior handling best practices

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