This has also been tested with php-4.0.2.

The simplest script I could come up with to produce the core dump is like this:

$a = 'string';
$str = 'another one';
$a[0] =& $str;

This will cause a core dump.

String indexing, IMO, is a misfeature only causing harm. What I find especially irritating is that if I index a string by string index, by accident, it automagically casts the string index to a numeric one. None of my business, of course.

Panu Kalliokoski