What Does =& Mean? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here: Closed 12开发者_Python百科 years ago.

Possible Duplicate:

Reference - What does this symbol mean in PHP?

I've been programming PHP for over 5 years and I've just came across something I have never seen whilst creating a wordpress theme.

$images =& get_children( 'post_type=attachment&post_mime_type=image' );

What does $images =& do? It's the =& I'm concerned about. I have a feeling it's bitwise but I wouldn't understand what it's doing even if it was.

Any help?

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Assigns a value by reference

http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.operators.assignment.php

Assignment by reference means that both variables end up pointing at the same data, and nothing is copied anywhere.

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=& is the assignment by reference operator.

You can find out more about references here: http://php.net/manual/en/language.references.php

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It's an assign by reference.

http://php.net/manual/en/language.references.pass.php

As opposed to a normal pass by value assignment.