[development] Ignoring Pass by Reference

I am coding a hook_comment, which normally specifies "&$a1" in the parameters. It would be helpful to just add some additional stuff to that array before calling drupal_write_record. I have no idea whether the additional data would "upset" the comment module and I don't really need to modify the form data anyway. Would it be reasonable to just drop the ampersand from the parameters? I would definitely add a comment that I'm doing that.   Nancy