How can references be used within a foreach loop in PHP to maintain changes to array values?

When using a foreach loop in PHP to iterate over an array, changes made to the current array element within the loop do not persist outside of the loop because foreach operates on a copy of the array. To maintain changes to array values, you can use references within the foreach loop by prefixing the $value variable with an ampersand (&). This allows you to directly modify the original array elements. 

$array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

foreach ($array as &$value) {
    $value *= 2;
}

unset($value); // unset the reference to avoid potential conflicts

print_r($array);

Keywords

PHP references foreach loop array values changes

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