equal ampersand

Hi all,

to the best of my knowledge equal ampersand (=&) is being used to reference methods (or variables)

therefore:

$db =& JFactory::getDBO();

would reference an exisitng db connection (created by Joomla)
while

$db = JFactory::getDBO();

would create a copy of an existing db connection which means additional db connections without them ever being closed
logging in to server / phpMyAdmin in this case might result in errors like: connecting to db failed / too many connections / #1040 Cannot log in to MySQL server

$user =& JFactory::getUser();

would reference the current user
while

$user = JFactory::getUser();

would create a copy of the current user which would create additional sessions

looks to me like there is a prob in CF as all occurances of JFactory::getUser() and the majority of occurances of JFactory::getDBO() appear without a preceding ampersand.

please correct me if my aasumptions / conclusions are wrong.

J!1.5.23 CF 4 RC2.0

Hi gabrielaH ,

You'd need to ask Max about whether this is a deliberate choice of his or not.

In practice I think that (a) in PHP5 most object are passed by reference regardless of the & and (b) any extra instances will be closed by the garbage cleaning when the containing function or class is closed.

Bob