How can understanding references in PHP functions improve code efficiency and performance?

Understanding references in PHP functions can improve code efficiency and performance by allowing you to pass variables by reference instead of by value. This means that the function can directly modify the original variable rather than creating a copy of it, which can save memory and processing time. 

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

$numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
modifyArray($numbers);
print_r($numbers);

Keywords

References PHP functions code efficiency performance memory management

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