In what scenarios would using references in PHP be beneficial, considering PHP5 handles objects as references by default?

Using references in PHP can be beneficial when you want to avoid duplicating large objects in memory. By using references, you can have multiple variables pointing to the same object, which can be useful for passing objects by reference to functions or methods without creating a copy. This can help improve performance and reduce memory usage in certain scenarios. 

// Using references to avoid duplicating large objects
$largeObject = new LargeObject();
$reference1 = &$largeObject;
$reference2 = &$largeObject;

// Now $reference1 and $reference2 point to the same $largeObject

Keywords

PHP references objects memory management performance

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