I understand this like that:
The reference in PHP is like creating single pointer at own variable in C/C++ and point at variable ( without pointers arithmetic and we can't get number of variable address in memory).
For example <?php
$a = 4; $b = &$a; $c = &$b;
echo "$a - $b - $c<br>"; // 3 pointers ( a , b , c) point at memory location where stored value of number is 4. $c = 5;
echo "$a - $b - $c<br>"; // all variables equals 5; unset($a
