Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not
a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at
http://www.php.net/manual/ and the instructions on how to report
a bug at http://bugs.php.net/how-to-report.php

"Returns an array in which each element is a copy of the corresponding member of 
the current user-defined function's argument list."

http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.func-get-args.php

"This function returns a copy of the passed arguments only, ..."

from the same page.

thus an array. it's just that this copied array loses it's byref value for one of the elements in the array...

this makes it impossible to have a hook system where you can also modify a parameter because it's byref

actually, i found a second valid use case for this oversight:

function array_set(&$a, $indexes, &$value) {
  $res = FALSE;
  if (count($indexes) == 0) {
    $a =& $value;
    return $res;
  }
  $i = array_shift($indexes);
  if (!isset($a[$i])) {
    $a[$i] = array();
    $res = TRUE;
  }
  return array_set($a[$i], $indexes, $value) || $res;
}

function set_config() {
  global $config;
  $args = func_get_args();
  $value = array_pop($args);
  return array_set($config, $args, $value);
}

global $config;
$config = array(
  'user' => array(
    'name' => '',
  )
);
set_config('user', 'name', 'FName LName');
var_dump($config);


the way i see it, there are 2 possibilities, really:

A) func_get_args should keep references for references
==> one could argue that byref parameters in the call is a stupid idea

B) functions that are declared with byref parameters should be greedy and force the variables to be a reference, if they must be (and where they come from), and that is what should force one argument to be byref in a func_get_args, even if it wasn't like this.
==> this way, you can safely have no use for byref parameters anymore.