Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not
a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at
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ArrayObject encapsulates the array and ArrayIterator depends on that encapsulation. For the moment i do not
see any reason to change that behavior.

First of all, thanks for Your kind reply.
If I could use ArrayObject for anything else than producing an iterator, I'd agree, that there is indeed no necessity for any further possibility to create an iterator for an array. In this case I'd simply use ArrayObject instead of Arrays and I'd be done with that one. 

But as it is now, I do have to convert my array into an object just for looping through it outside of my class.

Let me present an example for this:

<?php
  class MyClass implements IteratorAggregate
  {
    private $myData;
    function __construct()
    {
      $this->myData=array();
    }
    public function addValue($value)
    {
      /* do something with value */
      $this->myData[]=$value*2;
    }
    public function getIterator()
    {
      /* works:*/
      $tmpObject=new ArrayObject($this->myData);
      return $tmpObject->getIterator();
      /* fails:
       return (new ArrayObject($this->myData))->getIterator();
       return new ArrayIterator($this->myData);
       */
    }
  }

I mean, it is no problem to create one new temporary var vor the ArrayObject, but in the end I have the feeling, that its not, well maybe "perfect" is the right term, but a bloody workaround.

At the moment I do see four possible solutions:

1) Allow creating own instances from ArrayIterator

2) Add a static method to ArrayObject to create array-Iterators directly for any array supplied.

3) Add much more functionality to ArrayObject. (At least adding, accessing and removing elements would be fine.)

4) Make ArrayObject usable with all the existing array functions (e.g. sort(), etc.).

Yours Jens

Here's a patch to fix the open SPL issues:
http://marcus-boerger.de/php/ext/spl/spl-20040422.diff.txt
It would be nice to have it tested prior to comitting it after RC2.

Thank you for your bug report. This issue has already been fixed
in the latest released version of PHP, which you can download at 
http://www.php.net/downloads.php