Why does changing a property in a SimpleXMLElement object affect other variables referencing it?

When you assign a SimpleXMLElement object to another variable in PHP, you are actually creating a reference to the original object rather than a new copy. This means that when you change a property in one variable, it will affect all other variables referencing the same object. To avoid this issue, you can use the `clone` keyword to create a deep copy of the SimpleXMLElement object, ensuring that changes made to one variable do not affect others. 

$xml = simplexml_load_string('<root><name>John</name></root>');
$copy = clone $xml;

$copy->name = 'Jane';

echo $xml->asXML(); // Output: <root><name>John</name></root>
echo $copy->asXML(); // Output: <root><name>Jane</name></root>

Keywords

SimpleXMLElement object variables referencing properties

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