andy baxter wrote:
The majority of the errors I am getting are of the form:
'Parameter n to function_name() /expected to be a reference, value given/ in //path/to/file/ on line m//.'
This error is a known issue with PHP 5.3 and drupal from what I have read so far.
I have seen a few reported issues where people are recommending finding the relevant function and changing the parameter definition from '&$variable' to just '$variable'.
But I'm worried that this is just a quick fix which might throw up problems elsewhere - I don't really know either PHP or the drupal codebase well enough to know for sure what is the right way to fix these problems.
What I really want to know is, if I find the (relatively few) places in the code where php5.3 is causing an issue that actually breaks site functions, and apply the fix above (i.e. &$variable -> $variable) or something similar, is this a good way of solving the problem for the time being, given that the site goes public on thursday, or is it just going to break something else, or cause other problems like security holes or whatever?
It seems to have stopped the error in the couple of places I've already tried it, but it worries me to just convert a pass-by-reference into a straight parameter pass like this. I like to understand what I am doing rather than just apply a patch, which is why I was asking if anyone can explain a bit more about what's going on here?
cheers,
andy